


The Echo Howl

by volatilehearted (anomalagous)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Maze Runner AU, Multi, Slow Burn, basically everyone ever, i have no idea how to tag this, this is honestly going to take a while guys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-11
Updated: 2014-11-17
Packaged: 2018-02-20 17:49:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 26
Words: 51,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2437607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anomalagous/pseuds/volatilehearted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wakes up in a box.</p><p>Actually, 'wakes up' puts it way too mildly, it makes it sound peaceful, sedate and serene, the kind of thing you do on Sunday morning, covered in warm thick blankets and liquid sunshine. This is nothing like that. This is the antithesis of anything that comfortable, and it only brackets the notion that he has no idea how he even knows what Sunday or blankets or sunshine are.</p><p>He begins to exist in a box.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Loz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Loz/gifts).



> I stole an idea from Loz and I am running with it. Hopefully I'll make it all the way to the endzone. It isn't even a perfect borrow of what she'd mentioned but it's what germinated in my head.
> 
> Yes, this is a Maze Runner AU for the Teen Wolf crowd. No, not everyone directly correlates to someone from TMR so please don't bug me with questions like who's Minho and who's Alby and so forth. Yes, a lot of it will be familiar. I'm hoping a lot of it won't be, too, because I have a lot of very grand ideas for how to blend these two things together.

He wakes up in a box.

Actually, 'wakes up' puts it way too mildly, it makes it sound peaceful, sedate and serene, the kind of thing you do on Sunday morning, covered in warm thick blankets and liquid sunshine. This is nothing like that. This is the antithesis of anything that comfortable, and it only brackets the notion that he has no idea how he even knows what Sunday or blankets or sunshine are.

He begins to exist in a box.

It's dark and it stinks,  _really_ stinks, the scents so tangled together that he can't tell what's organic from what's mechanical. He can't sort out the tangle of burnt oil and rust and blood and canvas and sun-baked dirt, and he's still trying when the box suddenly lurches, one side and then the other, and begins to rise. This is how he discovers that he's been standing up, because the motion flings him straight to the filthy floor of his box. He wonders if being born the usual way is as terrifying as this is. The half-formed question in the thought seems so ridiculous and out-of-place inappropriate that he laughs, and then he's startled by the sound of his own voice bouncing around inside the metal walls of the box. He sounds young.

The motion of the box is giving him vertigo so he doesn't try to stand up again, he lays on the floor of it and feels the crosshatch of the floor grill press into the softness of his cheek. He can't see much of anything inside of the box and after a while of unsteady, high-speed ascent he decides there's no point in straining his eyes. Instead he closes them and tries to take stock of what he knows.

He's male. He has some kind of internal notion of his gender which is easily confirmed when he squirms around on his belly and puts a hand down his pants to examine the configuration there. Definitely male. His skin is pale, his hands broad-palmed with long fingers and short fingernails. Here and there he can see the dark spot of a mole or a freckle on his arms, and rolling over to ruck up his shirt reveals more of the same over his chest and belly. He's old enough to have a half-hearted showing of body hair on his chest and under his arms, trailing down from his belly-button and over his forearms. It's all dark, which probably means the hair on his head is dark too.

His name isn't Stiles, it  _isn't_ , he knows that, but he also knows that  _Stiles_ , Stiles with an  _I_ , is what he goes by. His true name is locked up in some arcane tower with the rest of his memories, anything at all that could tell him what the hell a Stiles even is. With any useful knowledge, anything that can't be distilled down to recent clinical observation about his body or his surroundings.

He breaks out into a clammy, uncomfortable sweat, head spinning. He settles onto his back, spreadeagle over the floor of the box, and waits. Discovers that his body is bad at waiting. There's always some part of him twitching if he doesn't focus on keeping it still, and there's just too much of him to focus on all at once. He gives up on it and twitches his way endlessly upwards.

Time is a broken concept. It's years but only minutes when the box slams to a stop, and he's grateful that he was already laying down because the force of it jostles his body an inch or two off of the grill before he clatters back down with a groan. That same gratitude is immediately seared away when the top of the box splits down the middle and then opens on outer hinges and the absolute darkness is replaced with the bright noonday sun staring directly down into his face. He brings both hands up to cover his face and shield his eyes with his picket fence fingers.

His fingers prevent him from seeing anyone coming until the box shudders beneath an impact and there are hands fisting into his shirt, pulling him roughly to his feet. Stiles staggers, arms pinwheeling, and finds he has to grasp onto the arms pulling him upright to keep from toppling back onto his butt. He blinks his tearing eyes until they clear and turns his focus on the owner of the hands.

It's the cheekbones that stand out most, sharp and dominant, like the rest of the boy's face had been built around the concept of these particular cheekbones. They nearly distract from the piercing, almost cold-blooded look in his sharp eyes. Nearly. “Come on, Whelp. Naptime is over.”

A chorus of dry chuckles brings Stiles' attention up to the rim of the box, where a crowd of people has gathered. Gawking is the wrong word for what they're doing; they are too subdued and reserved for that, a pack of tired, sun-kissed faces peering down at him from above. No. Not sun-kissed. Sun-frenched, maybe. Thoroughly sun-loved. Sun-debauched. Stiles distracts himself abruptly with worrying over where he could possibly have learned what french-kissing is, much less what lies beyond it. Oh  _hey_ , looks like he has an incredibly active imagination.

He's still contemplating that when the boy in the box with him changes his grip, shuffles him around to hold Stiles by the ribcage, under his arms. There isn't enough time for him to figure out what Cheekbones is doing before he has been physically lifted into the air and  _flung_ with superhuman strength at the crowd.

Stiles determines mid-air that he was never meant to fly. He doesn't clear the box's height. Instead, he hits the edge of the box and his vision whites out in spots. The sharp metal digs mercilessly into his stomach and Stiles makes a frantic, pathetically distressed noise in the back of his throat as gravity starts to reclaim his body. His feet kick uselessly against empty space, fingers scrabbling for purchase on the ground, and someone in the crowd laughs a bitter, sadistic laugh at his predicament. Stiles makes a mental note to find the owner of that voice later and avoid the crap out of them.

After what seems like an eternity of being stuck on the edge of the box, someone reaches down to grip his upper arms. The cold-eyed boy who threw him catches his wildly flailing feet and pushes up against the soles of them; between the three of them—mostly with minimal input from Stiles—he ends up on his back on the ground beside the box, chest heaving with exertion and the burn of pain in a line across his stomach from the rough metal lip.

There's no fanfare or production when Cheekbones jumps out of the box. He just  _does_ it, bounding up what must be a seven foot height as if it is a matter of inches. No one comments or acts as if this is the least bit strange. Instead, Cheekbones lands neatly on his feet by Stiles' head and nudges one side of Stiles' pounding skull with the toe of a shoe. “What the Hell was that, Whelp?”

Stiles doesn't answer. He's too busy trying to suck enough air into his lungs to keep from passing out. A second boy, head covered in sand-colored curls, lurches into his field of view until he dominates it, although the boy's eyes are elsewhere. Off-camera.  _How do I even know what a camera is?_ “Jackson, don't be a dick.”

Cheekbones—no, Jackson—snorts derisively, like he has a lot of practice at it. Like his nose is made for derision. “Why, Isaac? You gone on him already? Claiming him? Gonna  _scent mark him_ before the boss gets back?”

“No.” Isaac's voice is sharp-edged, laced with a gravity that doesn't match his words. “Use your nose, idiot. This guy's  _human_ .”


	2. Chapter 2

For a long time, there is no sound but the air shrieking its way in and out of Stiles' lungs.

He feels like it should be  _obvious_ he would be human, like that should be the default state, not that he's really aware of any state that people could otherwise be, given he's almost certain he'd be able to tell if the people crowding around him are vegetables or minerals. Well, maybe not vegetables, but definitely if they were rocks. He can tell people from rocks. He probably shouldn't be proud of that but right now small things feel like large victories.

Isaac doesn't grab him by his shirt. Instead, he offers his hand, and Stiles' mind catches up a few seconds later, reaching out to grasp the other boy's arm just below the elbow. Isaac mirrors the hold and hauls him upright with a casual ease and a motion that involves none of Stiles' own strength. He leaves his arm in place until he's certain that Stiles isn't going to fall over, but no longer. It gives Stiles enough time to catch his breath and pretend like he isn't grateful for the reprieve.

It doesn't last, of course. Almost as soon as Isaac has started to pull away, a girl's voice calls from the back of the crowd, impatient almost to the point of anger. “Isaac, stop messing, you know that isn't possible.”

Without any warning, Isaac reaches out and grabs the hem of Stiles' shirt, pulling it up to the mid-point of his ribcage. Stiles gives a wordless shout of indignation and wiggles out of Isaac's grip, but the red welt—soon to be a bruise, Stiles is almost certain—that his impact with the edge of the box has left on his belly is visible for anyone close enough to see. Several of the others suck in startled breaths. Isaac looks between them with a grim, resigned clench to his jaw, like the mark should explain everything.

The funny thing is, it does. The crowd immediately explodes into chatter, pressing in until Isaac raises one hand and keeps them off by the limit of it. They are talking too fast and too on top of each other for Stiles to make out much, but he thinks he catches phrases like 'the Whelp isn't even a Whelp' and 'what the hell is going on' and 'why would they send us a Monkey?'. He  _knows_ he catches on to something else, though. Everyone in the crowd is young, not prepubescent young exactly, but there isn't a face or a voice Stiles would clock as over twenty amongst them. Some of them are clearly closer to it—Isaac is well over six foot at a glance and there's another boy near the back that Stiles eyeballs as even taller—but some of them are probably closer to ten than twenty. There are boys and girls both, but the ratio isn't even, the advantage the boys' in the numbers game. They all look dirty and worn, but there's some kind of air around them, the way they move in coordination with one another without noticing, that sets his teeth on edge. He wants to say it reminds him of something that makes him uneasy, but he can't remember what it reminds him of, so he's left only with the fact that it makes him uneasy nonetheless.

Isaac takes a step forward towards the gathered people, sliding his body between them and Stiles without seeming to put much thought into it. “Get back to work.” He's calling, still sounding stern. “I don't have any more answers than any of you. You've all got jobs to do, go do them. We'll talk about this tonight when Scott and the others are back.”

The group disperses reluctantly. Isaac has to take several steps towards Jackson before he leaves, stealing a hard-eyed glance over his shoulder at Stiles that makes something cold clench at the base of Stiles' spine.  _Nope, don't like that guy at all_ .

With the people no longer crowding around, Stiles gets his first good look at the place he's arrived by box-evator. He doesn't know what he was expecting, but what he sees is definitely not it. It's hard not to notice the walls that cage the area in first; they're massive, several stories tall and made of a dark, pock-marked grey stone that bears enough weather-scars to seem like those walls have sat there for a thousand years. The growth of ivy that crawls up almost every available surface on them certainly seems to reinforce the idea that they're old, monolithic in nearly every meaning of the word. They contain a space that's perfectly square, somehow wide-open and claustrophobic at the same time, an open gap maybe ten or fifteen feet across in the dead center of each wall. They are far enough from where Stiles stands that he can't quite make out what's beyond the gaps, but he's  _pretty sure_ it's  _more walls_ .

Inside the walls, colors are too-vivid, like the contrast and brightness have been cranked up too high on the entire world. Most of it is green, lush grasses and growing plants, a knot of thick forest in one corner of the square and the rest of the area largely used to support a working farm. He can see cattle nudging each other with their heavy bodies in a pen next to something his brain helpfully informs him is a chicken coop. What space isn't being used for food production holds ramshackle buildings constructed from uneven wood, scrap metal, and stone that might have broken off from the walls outside. Stiles realizes easily that it's a  _village_ . Full of teenagers. That are, by their own account, not human.

He can't stop the laughter that starts to claw its way out of his throat.

Isaac turns to look at him with his brows furrowed, blue eyes wide and troubled, but Stiles can't stop laughing. It isn't a healthy laughter, and he knows it; it's flavored with panic, hysteria even, like every sound that comes out of him has come because it's been punched out of him. It possesses his body and Stiles leans over, trying to find his equilibrium, until the laughter turns just into weight on his chest and he can't breathe. His pulse roars up in his ears and there's a jump-cut in his awareness, the next thing he knows he's half-collapsed, one arm flung over Isaac's shoulders and being held up entirely by merit of the fact that the other boy is really, stupidly, unfairly strong.

“Are you gonna get it together any time soon or should I just leave you on the ground and come back later?”

“I'm fine, I'm okay, I'm okay, I'm fine.” Stiles wheezes, over and over, until it's even remotely true.

Isaac waits a few more minutes before starting to lean away again, eyeing Stiles from close orbit. “If I let go of you now, are you gonna fall over again?”

This time, Stiles coughs out a laugh that's actually a  _laugh_ . “...Yeah, probably not, but if I do maybe at that point I'd deserve it. I'm okay, man. I'm...okay.”

“Doubt that.” Isaac mutters, but he lets go and Stiles wobbles but he doesn't fall down. The tall boy eyes him skeptically for a moment before offering like it's some kind of compulsion, “I'm Isaac.”

“Yeah. Caught that. Stiles.”

“What?”

He can tell this is going to be something he's constantly explaining, and he has a sudden abrupt surge of indignation bubble up.  _Why couldn't I have a normal name, at least?_ What he says aloud is, “Stiles. With an I. I don't know why. It's just—it's my name. I guess.”

Isaac's eyebrows raise and his mouth tugs down at the edges in a vaguely impressed expression. “Ooo-kay.” He accepts, with some reluctance, and then he turns to spur himself into motion, jerking his head around on its long neck to indicate Stiles should follow him. “Come on, Whelp. There's a lot of explaining to do and I'm not gonna do it in the middle of the hot sun. First things first, yeah, we know you don't remember anything. None of us do, not from the time before we woke up in that box just like you just did. So don't ask. Okay?”

Of course, the first thing he wants to do, immediately is ask questions, to poke holes in the logic and try to find something, anything that anybody remembers. Stiles can tell that isn't going to get him anywhere, so he tries a different angle as he follows Isaac towards one of the buildings slouching in the distance. “...what did you mean, I'm human?”

Isaac looks at him like he's just soiled himself, half disbelief and half disgust. “That you're human. Did you somehow not already know that?”

Stiles blows annoyed air out between his lips. “Of course I knew that. I just didn't know there's something else I could have been. If none of you are human, what are you?”

“Werewolves.” Isaac said, and the sheer absurdity of the answer shut Stiles up all the way to the central building.

It takes passing through the threshold of the building into its relative cool darkness to startle Stiles' voice out of him again. He can't tame its incredulous edge, canting his smile upwards like he's expecting to be told he's being made fun of. “Seriously?  _Werewolves_ ? Like...fur out of the face, fangs, aw _oooo_ , watch out for the full moo--”

He doesn't get any further before Isaac is spinning on one heel, his entire face changed. It isn't a metaphorical change. It is a literal change, his features broadened, nose flattened and pulled forward into something vaguely reminiscent of a snout. There's more hair on him now, creeping down his forehead and his jaw line, accenting the fangs that show in his mouth when Isaac opens it. His eyes are  _yellow_ , suddenly, glowing like signal fires, and there's something vaguely otherworldly in the growl he gives off.

Stiles cries out and scrambles backwards until his back hits the closed door of the building.

“Seriously.” Isaac lets his features melt back into the human face he'd been wearing earlier, and Stiles feels vaguely nauseous at how easy and seamless the transition is. “Werewolves. Some of the younger ones still have tempers and aren't used to having a Monkey around, so if you value keeping your guts in your belly you might want to watch the jokes.”

“Yeah, got it.” Stiles' voice comes out sounding like he's pushing it through a sieve. Isaac busies himself with shuffling through the building towards what appears to be a space for supplies and starting to take things out in a systematically detached way. Stiles takes a few long breaths through his nose and lets them out of his mouth before he risks speaking again. “So what is this place? Why … what's going on here, why are any of us here?”

The taller boy grunts, flicking his eyes briefly in Stiles' direction. “We don't know. There's a lot to it, but the short answer is somebody put us here and so far it doesn't look like they want us to get out, so you'd probably better get used to being here. When the Alpha gets back he can explain better, he's a lot better with this crap.”

“Where is your Alpha if he isn't here now?”

“He's out.” Isaac starts to hand him things which Stiles is beginning to realize are bare essentials. A couple of changes of clothes. A bedroll, currently rolled. A little tin cup with a small dent under its handle.

Stiles frowns, looking down at the pile growing in his arms. “I thought you said you couldn't get out.”

“He isn't  _out_ out, he's just out, as in not in the Glade, and when he gets  _back_ he will be  _happy_ to answer all of your stupid questions so I am just about done with you, Whelp.” Isaac's patience had clearly started to run thin; Stiles can see the irritation poking through in the threadbare places. “You take all of that crap and go stake out a place to sleep. Don't take anybody's space.” He purses his lips for a moment, considering Stiles' face. “Which I guess – take Liam with you and make him tell you what spaces are taken.”

“But--”

There's another one of those strangely echoed growls that bubbles up out of Isaac's chest, and it makes Stiles take a step backwards despite himself. “Newbie, if you say another word I am gonna tear your throat out and save my Alpha the trouble.”

It abruptly seems like an excellent time to leave the building, so Stiles does, gear held awkwardly against his chest.


	3. Chapter 3

Liam, it turns out, is even less personable than Isaac, which Stiles wouldn't have believed was possible except that the first person he technically _met_ in this place was _Jackson_ , whom Stiles has already decided is probably actually the Devil. Liam is also one of the younger kids, short and scrappy in the way small things are when they're embittered about being small. He leads Stiles away from the building he's told is the Den towards the sleeping area like it's the most onerous thing he could have possibly been asked to do.

The 'sleeping area' seems to be a patch of especially thick grass near the Den with the occasional post driven into the ground to allow hammocks to be strung between them. Liam adopts a strange crouching way of moving when they get close, examining the base of each post with his nose and discarding them systematically. Stiles worries at his bottom lip for a moment with his teeth. “...why do you guys all sleep outside if you've got these buildings set up? Isn't it better to sleep in shelter?”

“Inside space is premium, for poisoned people mostly. It never rains here and it never gets cold so there's no point in not sleeping outside.” Liam explains as if he's explaining to a very small child, voice distorted by his proximity to the ground.

“Wait, if it never rains how do you get any water?”

Liam glances up at Stiles in irritation, and Stiles begins to wonder if  _all_ werewolves have blue eyes. He wonders if  _he_ has blue eyes. “It comes out of the well, obviously.”

“Oh, of course.”

He doesn't get any explanation for why there's a well or why this enormous pack of werewolves thinks it's safe to drink from. Instead, he gets Liam straightening up from snuffling around at one of the posts and gesturing between said post and one nearby. “Here. This one isn't taken.”

Stiles kneels awkwardly in the space Liam has described with a slash of his arm, setting things down on the ground nearby so that he can start to tie one end of his hammock to the first pole. His fingers are quick and clever, sure in a way the rest of his body just hasn't gotten on board for. He wonders where he learned to tie knots so deft and secure, but he apparently did, because the patterns of them are burrowed into the muscle-memory of his hands. “So—okay. If you all stay inside the walls and it never rains or gets cold, what's with the sick people that you need the inside space for?”

“I didn't say they get sick.” Liam says, cagey, his eyes darting away from Stiles as he works. He seems to be looking at one of the gaps in the walls. “We don't get sick. We mostly don't stay hurt, either, really. Our bodies heal up super fast. But we can get poisoned. And there's...”

Pausing in the act of rolling out his hammock to follow Liam's line of sight, Stiles rocks back on his heels. From this angle, he can definitely tell that there are more ancient walls beyond the nearest gap, as ivy-covered and imposing as the others. “There's what? What poisons people with super healing? What's  _out_ there?”

Liam rolls his eyes in a way that rolls his whole head, shoulders dropping in an expression of exasperation that's almost comical. Even Stiles can see the tension in his body that the boy is trying to hide, a seeming awareness that whatever's  _out there_ is something bad, and probably something he shouldn't be discussing with the new guy. Liam's impatience is also his weakness, however, and Stiles has already figured that out; where Jackson is clearly some kind of unhinged lunatic that Stiles would rather avoid at all costs and Isaac is experienced and confident enough to be willing to threaten Stiles rather than give in to him, Liam is young enough to be afraid of the consequences. He drops into a crouch next to Stiles and begins to speak in a low, imperative voice as if he is afraid of being overheard. “Out there is the Maze. Nobody knows why we're in the middle of a maze, we just are. Every day we send people out trying to find the way out of the maze. But they aren't alone in it, there's stuff in there. Wolfsbane-tipped arrows, but that's not the worst. The worst are the Halehounds.”

Stiles wants to ask about the wolfsbane and the significance of it, but something about that last word catches on the edges of his consciousness and rips a hole lined in terror through it. “Halehound? What's a Halehound.”

The young werewolf rounds his shoulders and looks away from Stiles, wrapping both arms around his knees. “Hope you don't find out. I've seen what they can do to a werewolf, if you're really a human, they'd tear you apart in seconds.”

It's a wound made tender by fear, and although there's an enormous part of Stiles that wants to push, to see how deeply he can get it to bruise and work information out of Liam in the process, he doesn't. He stands once he has the second half of his hammock tied off, instead, and starts dusting dirt and stray pieces of canvas from his fingers.

It isn't until he's tucked his extra clothes into the top of the hammock, rolled like a pillow, and starts to stomp away that Liam bounces up onto the balls of his feet and reaches out to stop Stiles with a hand on his elbow. Like the others, there's a casual strength in that one gesture that amounts to more power than Stiles thinks he has in his entire body. It's a constant reminder of how completely out of his depth he is. “Whoa, where are you going, you aren't done yet.”

Stiles feels his eyebrows scrunch down along the surface of his forehead, a different sort of inexplicable dread crawling up out of his heart. “What do you mean, I'm not done yet? I have very clearly tied my hammock up there. With knots. Those are some superlative knots, I mean look at them--”

“You have to mark the post.” Liam interrupts, gesturing to the wood supports. When Stiles starts to cast about himself to look for some kind of implement of post-destruction, he interrupts again, taking a step forward that's almost a stomp. “With your  _scent_ , Whelp.”

“What.”

One of Liam's hands jabs overly aggressively at the base of the poles holding Stiles' hammock again. “Maybe you're completely nose-blind but the rest of us aren't. It's how we know what belongs to who. Most things belong to the whole Pack, but sleeping spaces are personal. Just get it over with, man, everyone does it.”

“Does  _what_ ?” Stiles is starting to feel as if he's missing some fundamental key to understanding Liam's indignance.

“Just piss on the bottom of the post.”

“You want me to  _what?!_ ”

Liam stares as if Stiles has grown another head, blinking slowly. His head shakes side to side, and as he does his eyes roll in an impressive pattern. “Piss on it. It's the easiest way to put your scent somewhere. Don't you know  _anything_ ?”

Frustration batters its way forward out of Stiles' chest and he throws his hands up into the air, letting them flail backwards with their own momentum. “ _No_ , I don't know anything, I just  _got_ here, I've got exactly twenty minutes of reliable memory and none of its involves peeing on hammock posts! How was I supposed to know that you guys are some kind of demented pee-sniffers?”

The sound Liam makes is almost a growl, like he wants to be making the noise Isaac made earlier and doesn't know how yet. He crosses both of his arms and waits, staring at Stiles with a blinking rate so low it makes his mouth go dry. It's definitely the way that hunting animals look at things they think might taste delicious, and Stiles is definitely uncomfortable with the fact that he  _knows_ that when he doesn't even know what his last name is, or if he has one at all.

They stand there like that, in some kind of suspended animation of annoyance, before Stiles' patience snaps first and he uses both hands to gesture at Liam's condensed, angry stance. “Well, I can't just do it with you standing there  _staring_ at me!”

“I  _hate_ you.” Liam says, but he turns around, peering out over the Glade and making as enormous a point as he can of  _not watching_ Stiles.

He feels ridiculous but he does it, because on some level it makes sense to him. He'd seen Isaac's face, he can't deny the reality of  _werewolves_ . The scenting makes sense, and if Liam is actually taking advantage of his confusion and a certain amount of ignorant gullibility, well, the worst that happened is that he's peed a little on a wooden post. He isn't sure why, but Stiles has some kind of itching notion that he's done far more humiliating things in those memories he can't reach.

He marks both posts just for good measure, tucks himself back into his pants, and he's considering the merits of literally drawing a circle around his hammock when a long, low howl rises up from somewhere in the distance, bouncing back and forth against the walls until Stiles isn't sure where it's coming from. Liam's head snaps up and stares at one of the gaps, his whole body suddenly trembling with attention and what might be excitement. From the direction of the Den, there is a buckshot scatter of answering voices. Liam cranes his neck downwards and flicks his eyes towards Stiles. “The Alpha is coming back. We should get back to the Den.”


	4. Chapter 4

The interior of the Den has been overtaken by food preparation, and as soon as Stiles and Liam step into the building they're roped into helping by a boy so tall Stiles is convinced he might actually be a _half-_ _en_ _t_ instead of a werewolf, who introduces himself as Brett. Brett is calm, soft-spoken and collected, and he runs his kitchen with a precision that borders on neurotic. There doesn't seem to be any electricity, so the kitchen is seriously old school, huge stone ovens separated from the Den proper to help regulate the temperature. No one is willing to answer Stiles' questions about where the ice for the ice boxes comes from. The whole kitchen area smells of cooking food and vegetables and Brett puts Stiles to work shredding braised beef for tacos. Liam disappears into Brett's busy path like he's been pulled along unwillingly by the wake of the tall boy's passing, and Stiles is left flanked by a blonde girl dicing tomatoes on his left and a broad-shouldered, dark-skinned boy with a shaved head on his left shredding lettuce.

Stiles mostly realizes that he's starving by being near the food. He sneaks pieces of beef every so often, tucking it into the corner of his cheek and trying not to let himself moan too much over the rich, comforting flavor of it. The gravy that seeps out of the meat is just the right combination of spice and full-bodied sweetness and Stiles is fairly sure he's never eaten something that tastes so good. Of course, he can't really remember having eaten anything else, ever, before, so maybe it's a low bar.

It's the fourth or fifth time he's snitched some of the beef that the girl finally speaks up, her voice dry. “Can you try to sound a little less like you're having a sexual experience, Monkey?”

“Stiles.”

“What's that?” The girl drawls laconically. She is spending half of her attention, at best, on dicing the fat red tomatoes, but even with only half her attention the chunks come away precise and uniform.

“It's my name.” Stiles explains, watching the hypnotic motion of her knife and her hands. “Stiles.”

She doesn't comment on it as a name, which Stiles is immediately grateful for. Instead, she uses the flat of her knife to push the cut tomatoes off of her chopping board into a waiting wooden bowl. “Well, okay,  _Stiles_ , the relationship you are having with that beef right now is telling me a lot more about you than I really wanted to know, so if you're going to steal bits of it while you're supposed to be shredding it for the tacos, could you maybe just stop sounding like you're fellating it at the same time?”

From his other side, the boy snickers, glancing across Stiles' body towards the girl. Part of Stiles is surprised that they don't high-five.

Stiles shrugs, trying to make it seem like he isn't bothered by being the butt of the mostly-inside joke. “Yeah, yeah, you're real funny. I'm not gonna apologize. I've got about an hour and a half of memories, as far as I'm concerned this is the best food I've ever had.”

“Brett's pretty good, but I don't think the flavor's going to be improved if you make a mess of yourself all over it. Tone it back, Newbie. You'll have plenty of time to appreciate the food around here.” She glances up at Stiles before reaching for another tomato. Her eyes are dark and dangerous but they're also filled with the kind of amusement that makes Stiles feel she looks at him more like a toy and less like a boy. “I'm Erica.” She introduces herself a moment later, gesturing carelessly across Stiles' workspace with her knife. “And this is Boyd. He's the best Builder we've got. If you need something made by hand, you ask Boyd.”

Boyd's skin is dark enough that Stiles isn't sure a blush would even show on it, but he goes through the motions anyway, his smile soft and a little tender as he glances to Erica and then refocuses on the lettuce. Stiles takes the opportunity to look down at Boyd's hands. They're broad, dwarfing the green leaves and even the knife he uses to cut them into strips. Stiles feels like they're the sort of hands that should have thick callouses on them from hard work, but they don't. They have no marks on them at all. Neither do Erica's, in fact; their skin is flawless and blemish-free, bearing not a single hallmark of wear on it.

Stiles looks down at his own hands and notices a thin, faint scar circling up from the middle knuckle of his left-pointer finger to the tip. He isn't the same. He's been here a pathetically small amount of time, comparatively, and still every passing moment seems to be a reminder of how much he isn't like everyone else.

Erica continues with a nudge of her elbow into Stiles' side. “Me, I'm a Med-Jack. We don't have a whole lot of use around here, but who knows, with you around, maybe I'll get some practice. I can work on my bedside manner.”

The way she's looking at him, through the fan of her thick eyelashes, makes Stiles think maybe she's trying to flirt with him, and also makes him think that maybe Boyd is about to rip his head off for the offense, but he's distracted entirely from the conversation or even the beef he's been preparing for dinner by the nearness of voices outside. One of them he can identify immediately and readily as Isaac. There are two girls' voices, one lower than the other, but neither of them are the one that he focuses on so suddenly and thoroughly that he's no longer even aware that Erica is still talking to him.

It's the voice of the second boy, weighted heavy with exhaustion, too quiet to explain how much it cuts straight through to Stiles' ears, that takes his attention by the throat and doesn't let go.

It's  _familiar_ .

The feeling that he's  _heard_ that voice before, somewhere that he just can't imagine, fills Stiles' head with a faint buzzing like someone has installed a hornet's nest in the very back of his thoughts. He takes a step backwards as if he's going to abandon the notion of helping prepare for dinner, like maybe he's going to just collapse, but his knees lock and Boyd's face goes immediately from annoyed to a sort of distant concern, one big hand bracing at the small of Stiles' back and keeping him upright. Stiles is reasonably sure Boyd even asks if he's feeling okay, but he can't be entirely certain through the buzzing and the sound of that voice, growing closer.

The door to the Den opens and the light spills in like an aggressor, battering at Stiles' already-confused mind while the small group of people enter in quiet conversation. Isaac, as he'd already identified, a tall muscular girl with a deceptively soft face and honey-streaked brown hair, a much smaller one with her dark hair slicked back into a tight ponytail. Like before, neither of the girls give Stiles any pause whatsoever, because all of his focus is stolen by the second boy who steps into the Den from the brightness of the Glade outside.

Unlike Isaac, this boy isn't tall enough to feel the need to duck as he passes through the doorway. His body is denser, streamlined muscles standing out against the plain shirt he wears, tanned skin showing the evidence of a lot of time spent in the sun. He has dark hair, cut short but not short enough to hide its natural curl, and equally dark, expressive eyes that seem to have no depth to them, like Stiles could fall face-first into them and keep going for eternity. He moves with an exhausted confidence to his body and the others give him automatic deference, without thinking about it or acknowledging it. He has a kind smile and a crooked jaw line that makes his face seem so broad from some angles and so slender from others.

He has the same shell-shocked expression on his face that Stiles imagines he's been wearing for five minutes, now, when he looks up and meets Stiles' eyes.

“Oh yeah,” Stiles is vaguely aware of Isaac speaking, gesturing in his direction while he desperately tries just to keep standing, “We got a Whelp while you were out. This is--”

The Alpha speaks without being told, like the word is the cypher to some enigma he's been carrying with him his entire life, “...Stiles.”


	5. Chapter 5

For the second time that day since he came up in the box, all sound, the entire world around Stiles seems to stop.

He can feel the tension that descends on the Den like a palpable thing, something that he might be able to reach out and touch with his fingertips if he tried hard enough. It stretches out like a drumhead, centered on the space between himself and the brown-skinned Alpha, and Stiles is abruptly aware of a change in the tilt of Boyd's hand against his back. Every eye in the entire building is either on Stiles or the Alpha.  _Scott,_ his mind suddenly supplies, and Stiles isn't sure if he heard the name before, floating through the Glade, or if he already knew.  _His name is Scott_ . His mouth and throat have gone dry, the residual flavor of the beef like rust on his tongue. He can find no words to defend himself with, all he can find it within himself to do is to reach out and grip at the table in front of him until his knuckles go white and  _stare_ at the other boy's face.

This time it's Isaac that breaks the tension. His whole face collects inwards around his nose in some perfect balance between confusion and disgust, and he looks between Stiles and Scott a few times before his voice fills the silence with words that seem far, far too loud to Stiles' ears. “...yeah, that's right, did somebody fill you in before I caught you back from the Maze?”

“No.” Scott's voice is quiet, gentle, but his eyes are intent and they haven't moved from Stiles' face. He knows he's being scrutinized, but he can't quite help that he has nothing to offer to satisfy any kind of scrutiny. “No one told me. I just... ...I just knew.”

The scrunch of Isaac's face turns more towards concern and disbelief. He turns his body on its upright axis, so that he's more facing Scott than he isn't, part of his back now to Stiles as if Stiles were wholly unimportant. Part of Stiles starts to feel insulted about that, but he has the knees knocked out from under too much of his indignation by the intensity of Isaac's voice when he leans in towards Scott. “Do you  _remember_ him?”

Scott takes the question seriously. He peers over Isaac's shoulder for a long time, examining every facet of Stiles' face. Stiles holds his breath, bracing for the answer, unsure which one he really wants to hear. The one he gets sends a clutch of unreasonable disappointment through his chest. “No. I don't remember him. But I know him. Or I knew him.”

It explains perfectly what Stiles himself has been feeling; a sense of familiarity too strong to be called nagging, but not strong enough to supply him with anything concrete. He knows the Alpha's name is Scott, and he knows that somewhere, in that space where his memories have gone, there will be memories of this boy, that he  _knows_ him—but he can't remember a thing. The dichotomy of feeling like Scott is simultaneously an old friend and a complete stranger makes his stomach turn over under his ribcage.

Scott takes a step forward, until he's pressed lightly against the other side of the table that Stiles has been gripping for dear life, and tips his chin down faintly, like he wants to make eye contact with Stiles without showing his throat. Stiles remembers having read somewhere that body language is incredibly important to wolves—he has no idea where he read it—so he doesn't quite look Scott in the eye, instead staring at the tip of his nose and tipping his own chin up a little just to show a little extra skin in the throat-department.

“I'd introduce myself,” Scott starts, in that same reasonable, calm tone he used earlier, “But I think you already know my name, don't you?”

Stiles can't find his voice, so all he does is nod, flicking his attention up briefly towards Scott's eyes before refocusing on his nose.

Hanging his head down between his shoulders briefly, Scott nods too. Stiles can see the Alpha is doing some kind of math in his head, comparing and contrasting solutions to the problem set before him. He seems so calm, such a contrast to Stiles, who feels like at any moment he's going to fall apart into a pile of rags and hysteria. It's contagious, Scott's calm, and by the time he looks up to meet Stiles' eyes, decision in his expression, Stiles feels like he's been backed away from some dangerous edge. “Okay.”

The pack around him relaxes tangibly, and Stiles doesn't quite understand. Brett appears out of nowhere—a completely unfair trait for someone so tall—and puts a plate of warm, rich-smelling corn tortillas out near the rest of the taco assembly line. Stiles blinks, first up at Brett and then back at Scott. “Okay? What's okay? This isn't okay. Basically  _nothing_ is oka--”

Scott reaches across the table to grip at Stiles' elbow, trying to prevent him from whirlygigging up into a destructive dervish, and the contact is simultaneously comforting and electrifying. “Hey. Stiles. Calm down. Right now, it's okay. Why don't you get some food and we can talk, alright? I know it's got to be a lot to take in.”

Scott smiles, pats at Stiles' arm, and then turns to the task of starting to load up his plate with food. No one tries or suggests that they should go before Scott and Stiles gets the sense this is a little bit ritualistic. He doesn't push it. He isn't sure he wants to eat at all, with unease and anxiety coiled up like a pair of venomous snakes in his gut. Brett, however, seems certain that Stiles' appetite will return sooner rather than later, and doesn't let Stiles go until he's piled a plate up with some loaded-down tortillas, thick-sauced black beans and red-stained rice. He slinks away from the assembly line feeling a little like a fox that's stolen a hen it knows it won't be able to eat.

The Pack has given Scott enough space in one corner of the Den's eating area to support the illusion of privacy. Stiles approaches slowly, picking a seat opposite the table from Scott to settle into awkwardly. Scott has already finished over half of the food on his plate, and something about the sight of him eating is just so thoroughly  _normal_ that Stiles feels the knot in his stomach unravel and transmute back towards hunger. By the time he actually gets a taco to his mouth, he's already drooling again. Luckily, Scott doesn't seem to be judging him on the fact that he shoves half of an entire taco into his maw before he's realized what he's doing.

Instead, Scott seems amused, using some excess bit of tortilla to push beans and rice around on his plate. “You came up later in the day than we're used to,” He starts, eyes on his food. “They usually send us Whelps first thing in the morning. Most of the time it's early enough I can get the Whelp introduced to the Pack a little before I go out. I'm sorry I couldn't do that for you. I think I would have liked to.”

Something stirs in Stiles' chest. From what he can gather, things were working reasonably smoothly until his arrival earlier in the day. His arrival has punched a hole through what seems like it was an otherwise reasonably flawless routine, and yet here is the respected Alpha of this enormous Pack apologizing to  _Stiles_ for any minor inconvenience he might have suffered. Stiles gestures with one hand as if to chase the idea away. “It's fine. I think I have the basics figured out anyway. We all come up through the box, nobody remembers anything, and all of you are all werewolves, which I didn't believe in the least until Isaac showed me his ugly face.” He pauses, chewing as much on the pile of questions in his mind as on any of the food. “...am I really the only human? Have there been other humans before?”

Scott frowns, considering the question. “No. You're the first one. Everyone else has been a werewolf.”

There is something about the information that just doesn't match up, and it causes Stiles to frown to match Scott. “...if nobody can remember what came before being here  _and_ everybody who's ever been here has been a werewolf, how do you even know what a human  _is_ ?”

Spreading his hands across the air over the table, Scott shrugs lazily. “How do you know what a cow is, or a dog, or a panda? You know what they are, right? You didn't have to ask anyone what the animals in the farm are or what tacos were. There's sort of general memories that you keep, it's just anything about your specific life that's missing. So, partly, we know because of that. Partly we know because of the Maze.”

“There's humans in the Maze?”

Scott sighs, and pushes his mostly-empty plate away to brace his body against the table, leaning forward onto his elbows. He looks up through the worried bend of his eyebrows towards Stiles, but it isn't pity that sits in his face, or even frustration. For the first time since Stiles woke up in the box, he feels like he isn't actively annoying the person he's with, like he isn't something that needs to be passed off to someone else as quickly as possible. “Maybe I should start at the beginning. It's not gonna be everything because we don't know everything, but it'll be more than what you've got right now. I've been here the longest out of anybody, which is part of why I do the little talk. The space we're in now, inside the inner walls, we call the Glade. It's the safe part. You've basically seen how the Glade works, there isn't a lot going on here that you can't notice in about an hour or two of looking around. But outside of the walls there's the Maze. It's  _huge_ , miles and miles huge, and every day the paths in it change. Trying to map it out and get an understanding of its scale and layout would be bad enough, but there's also hazards in it that can literally kill you.”

Stiles feels his eyebrows rocket upwards, and he leans backwards on the bench, away from the table, but he doesn't interrupt.

“The least dangerous things out there are the ash lines. They're just what they sound like they are, lines drawn out of some kind of ashes. Sometimes they just run along parallel to the walls, sometimes they cut across areas and block them off, sometimes they're in patterns we don't really understand. The thing about them, though, is there's some kind of force that prevents us from crossing one of the lines. No matter how long you try or how hard you push—it's like there's an invisible wall going as far up as you can reach, blocking your way. After the ash lines are the Shades. We don't really have a better name for them. I'm pretty sure they're actually humans—you can smell them...well.  _We_ can smell them, sometimes, in the Maze. Sometimes it smells like they've been on the ground, but we never see them. I've been here for about three years and I've only barely seen one twice. They stay out of sight, maybe on the top of the walls, and whenever we're doing something they don't like, that's when the arrows come out.” Scott's eyes are almost turned inwards now, like he isn't quite seeing Stiles as he explains the dangers of the Maze.

“But, wait, arrows?” Stiles has all but forgotten his food at this point, tucking his fingers up under his legs as he sits and scrutinizing Scott's face. “I thought you guys healed really fast, I'm almost certain Liam mentioned that. Why do you care about arrows?”

“They're laced with wolfsbane.” Scott answers immediately, the grim expression on his face telling Stiles a great deal about the importance of the statement that he was somehow missing out on. “Wolfsbane is poisonous, especially to werewolves. We've got a remedy we make here in the Glade for wolfsbane poisoning, but you have to make it back here in time or it doesn't work.”

Scott's tone tells Stiles exactly what the consequences of it  _not working_ is. It tells Stiles that, in fact, Scott has lost wolves in the past to this very thing. He doesn't push. Instead, he lets Scott continue talking, the Alpha's shoulders now corded up with tension and his head hung low between them. “But that's not really the worst of it either. The worst of it are the Halehounds. We don't really know what they are, but some of us think they might be werewolves who've lost their mind or mutated or something. They do kinda look like a half-man, half-wolf, but they're bigger than most people are and at least in the years I've been here nobody could ever shift to look like one of them. You'll know one if you see it, which would probably be too late. They're fast, and they're  _mean_ . They  _will_ kill you. Luckily, they only really seem to come out at night. That's why we stay inside the Glade at night.”

Leaning back again to try and absorb the information, Stiles glances towards the wall of the Den like he could see through it to the Glade beyond and the enormous gaps in the walls. “What keeps them from just coming in at night and killing everybody then? _Politeness_? You guys have _polite_ face-eating monsters in your  labyrinth out there?”

“No,” Scott snorts the word, sounding like he's trying to hold back laughter. “The doors into the Maze close at night.”

“What, you're kidding me.”

Scott lifts a hand to trace an 'x' pattern over the left side of his chest. “Nope, cross my heart. You'll see, it won't be too long from now. Just before sundown the doors close. As best we can guess, that's when the rest of the Maze re-arranges itself too.”

It seems unreasonable, unrealistic and bizarre, but so does everything  _else_ that's happened in the past few hours, so Stiles simply nods. He allows himself to accept it because he has no other choice. This is his reality now, the only reality he can actually remember, and trying to logic it away won't actually  _do_ anything to make it  _go_ away. “Okay. So what's the Maze for? Why are we here? How do we get out?”

“None of us know those answers, Stiles.” Scott sighs, pushing back from the table and onto his feet again. “We've been trying for three years to get out, but there's a lot about the Maze we don't know yet. I can tell you one thing, though. It's dangerous. It's deadly. It's killed my friends. And if it's that bad for a werewolf, it's ten times as bad for you. I don't know why they sent us a human or why you seem so familiar to me, but I'm going to find out, and until I do? That Maze is off-limits.”

Stiles can't quite help but feel, as he watches Scott back away from the table and make his way out of the Den, like he's suddenly being  _punished_ .


	6. Chapter 6

Stiles doesn't stay to help with clean-up. He knows he should, he feels some sort of social pressure leaning on him from nowhere in particular to wash his dishes and make sure he isn't relying on someone else carrying his weight, but it's his first day of _anything_ and Stiles is still feeling tender from having been denied access to the Maze. He feels a little self-indulgent, and not like examining whether that's actually just something he _always_ feels.

The real kicker of the whole affair is that until he was  _denied_ passage into the Maze, Stiles isn't sure he  _wanted_ to go. Now, it's practically all he can think about. It's childish, he's vaguely aware, but his mind doesn't seem to particularly like to take directions very seriously. It goes where it will, and Stiles is beginning to think he's lucky if he can get his body to follow even a third of the time. He paces the Glade restlessly, casing the outer edge of the garden near the Den and noting the presence of fat green pea pods, rich-colored peppers in red and yellow, but also the spiky, weaponized leaves of aloe vera and pebbled horehound plants. He wonders what werewolves need with sunburn remedy and cough suppressants, but Stiles supposes he also shouldn't be picky as he's more likely to need the qualities of the plants in the garden than any of the Pack. There's a little bit of a nagging wonder rising in the back of his mind, the unanswered question of how far ahead whomever must be orchestrating this entire circus was thinking, to make sure there were medicinal plants in place for the arrival of the first human in three years.

He doesn't like the question, but he puts it on the pile of unanswered questions that already stretches upwards, past his head, threatening to fall over and crush him.

He's about twenty yards from the nearest door into the Maze when the air is shot through with a deep, sonorous cracking sound like ice coming apart and the door starts to close.

First, Stiles gives a startled yelp, scrambling backwards from the source of the sound. He is immediately grateful no one is near enough to comment on having seen him spook, although he already knows better than to think the little display went entirely unnoticed. Once he regains his balance enough to actually  _look_ at the door, however, Stiles is fascinated.

It just doesn't look like it should be physically possible. He tries to logic through the logistics of it from multiple angles, but his slippery mind doesn't find any purchase on the concept. For all intents and purposes, it looks like the wall on the right-hand side of the gap just  _grows_ , extending with a slow and terrible grinding noise across the space. It takes maybe five or so minutes from start to finish, and when the sections of walls finally meet, Stiles is hard-pressed to be able to tell that they ever came apart. The dull thud of them coming together echoes through the now-enclosed space of the Glade like the closing of a particularly enormous book.

The natural light fades shortly after that, and the broad spaces of the Glade and its farm areas become more hazards than welcoming curiosities. The woods in the corner loom upwards in long shadows and Stiles finds himself retreating back to the area around the Den, dimly lit by bare torches and slipshod home-made hooded lanterns. He grows acutely aware of the fact that literally everyone else living in the Glade has far better night vision than he does, shortly coming to the conclusion that there's really nothing for him to do but retreat back to his hammock in the sleeping area. He feels restless and unsettled, like he'd rather stay up later and sleep later, but being at the mercy of the sun and his weak human eyes precludes doing anything  _about_ that restlessness but laying in his hammock, rocking faintly side to side, and listening to the sounds of the crickets as the night settles in. Why are there crickets? What possible benefit could they serve to the function of the Glade? Did they get in on their own or did the creators of the maze add them for—what, ambiance? In a place with magically moving walls, full of werewolves, surrounded by things trying to kill them?  _Fuck_ ambiance, ambiance was bullshit. Fuck their bright, scintillating cricket voices and the false equivalency that tried to create in his heart to tie together the sound of crickets and  _safety_ . Security. Like there is any of that to be found in the Glade or the Maze at all.

Stiles is still trying to repress the sudden murderous rage that has risen up in his chest, directed at every cricket that ever lived, in the Glade or out of it, when Liam comes to fling his body into the hammock next door. “So how was your first day, Whelp? Big talk with the Alpha?”

“You watch it with the Whelp crap,” Stiles grumbles, driven out of the mood of tolerating any teasing by the incessant whine of the crickets. “I'd guess I'm at least two years older than you and almost twice your height.” He lets the statement settle in the air, unfortunately fairly convinced that Liam hasn't taken it seriously at all, before continuing on in a slightly more sullen tone. “He told me to stay the hell out of the Maze.”

He can't really see Liam very well in the darkness, but Stiles can guess from the sounds that the other boy has rolled over to lay on his belly, giving  _him_ a better vantage point of Stiles' own expression. “Which is good, unless you're suicidal. It's dangerous out there. They don't let just anybody go run the Maze. I haven't been out there yet.”

That does more to make Stiles feel better about the whole affair than he thought it would. Maybe the problem isn't that he's a human. Maybe it's that he's new. Maybe he'll also see a flight of fat pigs take off from the north wall when the doors open in the morning.  _It could happen_ . “Yeah, but you can't find a way out of a maze you aren't even looking at. What if there's something out there that you guys have missed?”

Liam's derisive snort should go in some sort of hall of fame for derisive snorts, it's so effective. “You really think that you're going to stumble out there and find something in one day that a whole pack of werewolves with better hearing, eyesight and sense of smell than you hasn't found in three years?”

Laid out in front of him like that, like an unraveled scroll of his own hubris, makes the notion seem extra ludicrous. Stiles sinks into his hammock with a reluctant groan. “So what am I supposed to do, just sit around?”

“Hell, no. You figure out what you're good for around here and you do it, and you try not to get yourself hurt or a drain on resources. Trust me, dude, you'll have nothing but time to figure out where your talents are.”

Stiles is silent for a few long moments, considering Liam's words. Something else, from earlier in the day, bubbles up into his consciousness as he considers. “Hey—so the Alpha, Scott? I … I felt like I knew him. When I first saw him? And he seemed to feel like he knew me. He knew my name without having to be told. Is that normal? It didn't seem normal.”

“No,” Liam says, after his own long period of silence. He sounds reluctant. “I haven't been here that long, but it's been long enough to figure out that isn't usual. Nobody remembers anything, except the unlucky assholes that the Halehounds caught.”

“What?” Stiles straightens a little, feet slipping against the pole holding up the end of his hammock when he tries to brace against it for leverage. “What? The Halehounds make you remember?”

There's a faint popping sound that takes Stiles a good fifteen seconds to identify as Liam's jaw stretching through a yawn. “Yeah, kinda—look. It's not important 'cause you're not gonna go out in the Maze and you're not gonna meet them. So nevermind. Just go to sleep.” The sound of rustling canvas makes it clear that Liam has rolled over, shutting the door on the conversation.

Stiles doesn't sleep, not for a long time. He lays on his back and stares up at the sky. He expects to think about Halehounds, but what he ends up dwelling on is  _where are the stars?_


	7. Chapter 7

Stiles is woken by the heavy weight of a hand on his chest in the thin light of predawn. It's sudden and unexpected, and for a few seconds he flails in his hammock, panic spearing in from all sides. Someone starts to shush him, which somehow makes it _worse_ until Stiles looks up to focus on the image of Scott's face, full of concern, suspended over him. The sight fills him with an immediate sense of calm and Stiles lets his body relax, limbs sprawling ungainly off of the edges of his hammock.

Scott smiles. There's something unfair about that smile in a way Stiles cannot articulate. “Hey. Sorry. I thought maybe today we could do the tour we didn't get to yesterday, and maybe also try to find a place for you to fit in. Whatcha think?”

Stiles thinks it sounds amazing. The idea of spending the day with Scott is oddly comforting. He wobbles in the hammock and Scott turns the hand on his chest into a hand on one arm, helping him to sit up. Stiles uses his other hand to scrub over his face, trying to focus, glancing around the Glade in the haze of near-dawn as his brain tries to catch up to the concept of being awake. Part of him, maybe even most of him, wants to express his willingness to trail around behind Scott's steady warmth for the entire day, but motion near the north door catches his eye. Jackson and a pair of boys Stiles hasn't met yet are checking straps on their gear and generally restlessly pacing, waiting for the door to open. “...wait, are they waiting to go out into the Maze? Don't you go with them? Are you taking me out into the Maze?”

Scott laughs, sounding incredulous, and looks over his shoulder to follow Stiles' gaze to the pacing wolves along the walls. “No. We take turns, different teams go out on different days, just to make sure we keep fresh and keep our heads up about it. Today Jackson's going out with Matt and Andy. I'll take Malia and Kira out again tomorrow. So, don't worry, we're not going into the Maze today. Let's get out familiar with the Glade instead, okay?”

The disappointment Stiles feels to hear he won't be going out into the Maze is short-lived. The air is cut with the same low, deep crack that heralded the close of the doors the night before, and as soon as there's enough space between the two halves of the wall, Jackson and his cronies drop down to all fours and adopt the silliest-looking run, leaping forward with arms outstretched, pulling themselves along, and then darting further forward with another powerful leap from their legs. Silly, but  _effective_ , they move at an unreal speed and are soon lost to view. “...yeah. Pretty sure I can't do  _that_ , anyway. So, uh. Where do we start?”

There's an infectious quality to the way Scott bounces up on his feet, waiting for Stiles to actually manage to get all the way to standing. Stiles obliges, using his residual sleepiness as an excuse to keep one hand on Scott's shoulder. The contact seems companionable and Scott doesn't seem to mind. “First, we grab something to eat from Brett. It's easy to get too far into your head in here and forget to eat, and if you forget to eat your body starts shutting down, so breakfast first. Then we'll take a walk around and see if there's anything you're interested in that isn't the Maze.”

Most of the Pack is either still asleep or only just starting to stir into wakefulness, but by the time Stiles and Scott get actually inside the Den, Brett is already awake and working. Stiles isn't sure how he manages to be so good-natured about the entire situation, but Brett seems to have no complaints. Instead, he uses leftover tortillas from the night before to pack up layers of recooked beans, scrambled eggs, peppers and tomatoes and thick, buttery slices of fresh avocado. Stiles finds himself immensely grateful that, regardless of how dire their situation otherwise seemed to be, they have good, fresh food to enjoy. It seems like such a small thing to be grateful for, but by the time he and Scott get to what seems to be the first stop on the official tour, his belly is full and warm and the day is starting to look like it might not be strictly terrible.

They start near a building set off from the Den, near the haphazard collection of animal pens and coops that hold the foodstock for the entire Glade. It smells of the animals, their feed and their sweat and their manure, but it also smells of blood, in a way that makes the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. The smell doesn't seem to bother Scott nearly as much. “This is the Blood House.” He says, and somehow in his mouth those words don't seem nearly as sinister as they could be. “This is where we take care of the animals. Calves and goat kids and piglets are born in here, but this is also where we slaughter them. We can't really afford to waste much, so we try to make sure we use everything we get out of each animal. Brett's kind of a miracle-worker where that's concerned. You could work in here if you wanted, as a Slicer, we always need someone to butcher the animals.”

Stiles is already shaking his head before Scott's even finished the sentence, intensifying the motion when those dark eyes turn back to him. “Uh-uh, nope. I mean, don't get me wrong, I appreciate the tasty beef and the tasty eggs and basically everything I've put in my mouth since I got here, but I don't think—I mean, I feel a little bit queasy just standing here. I don't think anybody's gonna appreciate their fine steak if I puked all over it a coupla times first, right?”

There's amusement in Scott's eyes and the upward cant of his mouth, the way his eyebrows lift faintly at Stiles' words. Stiles has a sense, vaguely, that he'd be furious with that indulgent look coming from almost any other face. “Okay, so not the Blood House. That's okay, most werewolves aren't too squeamish. We'll find you something.”

Moving onward from the Blood House brings them to rows and rows of corn and barley, furrows dug into the ground to facilitate long troughs of water for growing rice and taro root. The well sits nearly in the middle of it all, an elaborate network of pipes gracing the top edge of it for crude irrigation that Stiles can only assume is actually effective, given how healthy and robust the crops look. He finds himself distracted by trying to identify the different kinds of plants in the gardens, dredging up information on their names and uses from a mind that won't give even the slightest hint to his own past, short of the warm-old-blanket feel of Scott's smile.

Scott, who seems to notice how distracted by the plants Stiles has become, who slows to consider the vegetables and the grass growing wild for hay with a thoughtful expression. “We call the folks who take care of the gardens the Track-Hoes. They do planting, weeding, harvesting, even cross-breeding if we get the right kind of seeds for it. We grow a little bit of everything, whatever we get sent up from the Box.”

“Maybe,” Stiles allows, shrugging his shoulders and trying to put his hands in his pockets before realizing that his pants don't really have anything that could be called pockets. He mostly ends up rubbing at the tops of his thighs a couple of times awkwardly. “It'd be better than cutting up pigs, anyway.”

“Yeah, I can tell you're not convinced.”

Stretching up on his toes, Stiles tips his chin upwards, gesturing to the tree line he can see beyond the gardens. “...and what about the trees? Orchard? Whadda you call those workers, Appleseeds? Basketheads?”

Something solemn comes into Scott's expression, and he bows his head just slightly. “Kinda. Here, I'll show you. It's important too.”

From afar, the forest seems like a single entity, some kind of united front of similar trees, but as they get closer Stiles can tell that isn't true. There are trees of every imaginable height and girth making up the piecemeal forest, fruiting trees in various states of bloom or ripeness, tall narrow pines with dark needles and rough bark. Scott is silent as he leads Stiles through the wooded area, picking out barely-extant paths between the underbrush and the fallen leaves until he gets so far in under the canopy that the now robust shine of the mid-morning sun is faded out to a warm, sleepy sort of dappled twilight. It's almost pleasant, and Stiles is about to say so, until he realizes that Scott's pace has slowed, attention focused on something in the heart of the forest up ahead.

It takes Stiles' eyes longer to catch up, but when they finally focus, as he comes up abreast of Scott, he realizes what he's looking at is a graveyard.

It's a small graveyard, with the headstones made out of slapped-together wood and twine and very little actual stone, but it's still a graveyard, and the reality of that punches Stiles straight in the gut. He lifts a hand to put it on Scott's shoulder, feeling he needs to offer  _some_ kind of support. He doesn't know why he does, he doesn't  _feel_ like he's a generally tactile-affectionate person, but it feels right. Scott doesn't shrug the contact away, at the very least.

Instead, he speaks with a voice that's distant, like his pain for these half-dozen people is distant, not forgotten but far away where it can't stop him from doing his job. “These are the people who didn't make it. Most of them died in the Maze. One of them died to wolfsbane poisoning before we realized we could make an antidote. Three to the Halehounds. But Laura--”

Scott moves out from underneath Stiles' hand and squats down near one of the headstones, brushing forest detritus off of a box that lurks beneath. It's half as long as Stiles expects a coffin to be, and at first, he wonders how young Laura was, to have such a small resting place. “--Laura was the alpha before I was. She was good at this in a way I'm not, really, that I don't think I'll ever be. She was willing to take more risks. I guess that's what happened. After we had...I don't know, maybe ten or twelve of us, she decided to try and leave by the hole the Box stays in. We made this rope, hundreds of feet of it, and she was going to go down and see if she could see where the Box came out of, like maybe we could rapell down and take it by storm. She got about fifteen or twenty feet down and this pair of blades just...” The alpha takes a deep breath in, narrative paused, before he continues in a more hushed tone, “We could only bring the top half of her up because she'd been tied into the rope like a harness.”

It seems too terrible to contemplate, to terrible to be real, the concept of having to watch a friend and a mentor die in such an abrupt, brutal way. Stiles can't get his mind around it, finding his thoughts slipping to the side and away from his fingers every time he tries. “Hey,” Stiles says, roughness stirring in his voice, and he scoots closer again to re-establish the contact of his fingertips with the easy slope of Scott's shoulder. Scott seems to relax a little. “If it's any consolation, this place seems to work like freakin' clockwork. Maybe you feel like you've got a lot to live up to but your whole Pack looks up to you, I can tell just in how they move around you. You're doing okay. I'm sure she'd have been proud.”

Trying to smile around the sadness that sits so clearly on his face, Scott looks over his shoulder at Stiles. He starts to speak, but when he opens his mouth, the sound that Stiles hears isn't Scott's gentle voice but a blaring, jarringly discordant alarm.

Stiles startles, although he tries not to, and leaps almost a foot backwards away from the alpha werewolf. Scott's reaction is somewhat more sedate, his eyes dark and troubled but far less wistful as he pushes back onto his feet from his crouch. “...what the heck?”

“I don't know! Isn't this normal? Why is there an insanely loud alarm? Is this new? I'm not sure I'm into—” Stiles starts to rattle through a thousand questions, nervous and feeling the words prick at the insides of his mouth due to that nervousness, but Scott waylays him with a gesture of his hand.

“I know what it is.” He explains, his expression condensing down into confusion. “It's the Box alarm. It only goes off when they're sending a Whelp up. Except they just sent you yesterday.”

“How's that relevant?”

Scott's voice grows hard, tight and controlled around what might be fear. “We've never gotten more than one Whelp a month before, not in three years, not even when people died.”

Stiles and Scott waste another three seconds to stare tensely at each other before they both break into a dead sprint towards the edge of the woods.

Even on two legs instead of all fours, Scott is significantly faster than Stiles. By the time he gets back to the Box, it's already on the surface and Stiles is completely out of breath, red-faced and convinced he might be about to  _die_ . He is almost certain he isn't twenty years old, yet, but he's also almost certain that his lungs are going to burst and he's going to drown in his own spit and blood as a result of pushing a body totally unsuited for any kind of exertion beyond its means. He staggers up to the edge of the Box just as Scott jumps down into it, leaning over to brace his hands on his knees and suck air into his chest. No one is staring at him, which he feels like maybe wouldn't be true if the Box's arrival wasn't itself far more bizarre than one human that can't keep up with the wolves.

“It's a girl,” Scott's voice calls up from the depths of the Box. “She's not awake. She's breathing, but she's—guys, I don't think she's a wolf either.”

There's a tension in Scott's voice that betrays how strange the notion is. Two humans in two days. Something was deeply, deeply wrong, the routine that had held the Pack together for three years starting to show frayed edges that seem like they could catch on any roughness and at a moment's notice come apart. The girl is pale but she's beautiful, like classical art is beautiful, with full lips and a heart-shaped face and thick strawberry-blonde hair spread around her like a halo. “She's got something in her hand, I'm just gonna--”

The minute that his fingers touch the girl's skin, she jolts to life. Both green eyes flare open, wide and wild, and she looks around the faces of the gathered Pack with a frantic, animalsitic air to her that clearly makes the wolves uncomfortable. It doesn't last, however, because four or five faces into her search she makes eye contact with Stiles and sucks a sudden breath in, shoulders slumping as if something about the sight of him has relieved a deep tension that was keeping them up.

Then she opens her mouth and  _**screams** _ , sharp and piercing like an ice pick, reverberating with supernatural power.


	8. Chapter 8

It _hurts_.

That scream, echoing around the walls of the Glade, bouncing off of them and spearing straight into his brain,  _hurts_ , indescribably, in a way that isn't purely physical. A lot of it is physical, his eardrums rattling in his skull like they're going to rip free at any moment, but there's something else that tears into Stiles as the girl screams, hooks claws of fear into his gut and rends downwards. His limbs go cold and then they seem to go numb, and Stiles is barely aware of the fact that he's not the only person collapsing at the edge of the Box, hands over his ears. It does nothing but modulate the scream through the bones of his fingers and he isn't at all sure that's better.

His vision is starting to blur, shaken into fragments by the sheer volume and power of the sound coming out of the girl in the Box. Stiles can just barely make out the image of Scott staggering back to his feet and sliding through the shift seamlessly, easier in the moment than breathing. Scott's wolf-eyes aren't yellow like Isaac's, they're a bright, furious crimson. Scott adjusts his stance like he might be about to try and pick up something enormously heavy and Roars. Really roars, in a way Stiles is quite sure humans can't do.

It undercuts the scream, and for a couple of horrible seconds, both are happening simultaneously, each individual sound already louder than the loudest sound Stiles thinks his body can tolerate. They striate against each other, multi-tonal, and then as abruptly as she started the girl in the Box stops screaming, clicks off like a switch has been hit, and collapses backwards. Caught up in the act of roaring her quiet, Scott isn't quite quick enough to catch her before her head impacts the metal grille of the Box floor, and she goes still.

The silence in the aftermath of that scream and Scott's subsequent roar seems almost artificial. Stiles uncurls slowly, peeling his hands free, and lifts his head to look around at the Pack. Most of them are on the ground, on their knees if they're lucky or curled up in a fetal position if they aren't. Most of them are also bleeding from the ears, long thin rivers of deep red, and it occurs to Stiles for the first time that the werewolves have much keener senses than he does as a human, and as bad as that experience was for him, it must have been a thousand times worse for the wolves. He is overcome by a brief and unfamiliar sense of compassion and the desire to go to each of them, individually, even the ones he doesn't really know yet, to make sure they're all right.

Luckily, the impulse passes quickly.

Scott gathers up the girl from the floor of the Box while the rest of the Pack is recovering, hopping up with the same casual ease that Jackson used the day before, as if seven feet is a reasonable amount of distance to be able to jump, straight up, from a complete standstill, with another human being in one's arms. He lays her down on the grass next to where Stiles is trying to renew his grasp on the concept of havinglegs, and the scent of dusky rose wafts up from the girl's hair. Scott seems to ignore it, even though even Stiles' addled human brain and weak human nose can tell it's one of the best smells that's ever existed, and instead leans down to carefully pry her right hand open and remove the piece of paper she's been clutching there.

It takes a few tries for him to smooth it out enough to read it, tipping first the paper and then his body relative to the sun to try and get the best angle to read it. Scott's voice is quiet, but it rings like a deep bell, dropping straight to the ground and spreading as fog does. “'She's the last one. Ever.'”

“What the hell does  _that_ mean?” Isaac's voice snaps stress-tight over the heads of the crowd before Stiles has figured out exactly where Isaac is in the confused dogpile of headachey Pack members.

“I don't know.” Scott admits. Instead of crumpling the paper back up, he folds it neatly along its longest axis, then folds it again and tucks it into the back pocket of his pants. Stiles spends a little too long glowering at said pocket in abstract jealousy. At least, he's pretty sure it's jealousy. “Erica—she take her into the Den. Make sure she's not hurt, keep her fed the best you can. If she wakes up, if she twitches, if she does anything that you think is her trying to communicate, call for me, okay? And I guess...” He gestures helplessly with one hand, “...keep a pillow on hand in case she screams like that again. I want to talk to her as soon as she's with it, though.”

Stiles' ringing ears can barely make out Erica's murmur of assent, but as always, apparently the werewolves are having a lot less trouble with things than he is. Boyd rises up like an earth golem and sidles close, scooping the new arrival up in both arms like her weight is utterly insignificant, and then starts off for the nearby Den with Erica at one elbow, already pulling her thick blond hair back into a tight knot at the base of her skull.

The rest of the Pack gets itself together gradually and starts to disperse, going back to their individual work assignments. Scott extends one hand down and it's by that gesture that Stiles remembers he's still kneeling. He reaches up to grip Scott's forearm and uses the alpha's easy strength to pull himself back to his feet as Isaac approaches. He has both hands thrust downwards, fingers rolled into loose fists, shoulders rounded. The way he comes at Scott, trying to make his eyeline lower than Scott's despite the fact that Isaac must have almost six inches of height on his alpha, reminds Stiles of a nervous dog licking at its master's fingers for attention and approval. The image is so vivid and so clear in his mind he has to choke back a laugh, and then a frustrated huff at the constant awareness that he can't remember where the hell he's ever seen a dog, even one, much less the one that stands so clearly in his imagination that he's certain it's actually a memory.

“What does that  _mean_ ?” Isaac hisses once he gets into range, jabbing one finger at Scott's hand as if Scott were still holding the paper, as if either Scott or Stiles would at all be confused about what he means. “That she's the last one, ever?”

Scott's shrug is so unhurried it's almost comical. “You've got as much idea as I do, Isaac. If I had to guess, I'd say it means she's the last one, ever.”

Watching Isaac struggle so obviously with his urge to slap Scott and his urge to submit is enough to entertain Stiles for a good thirty seconds despite everything that's going on. It stops being so amusing when Isaac rounds on Stiles, eyes boring into the tender parts of Stiles' still-throbbing skull. “Who is she?”

Stiles feels the indignation so suddenly and so strongly he's frankly amazed he doesn't also suffer whiplash. His body gives a good go of it anyway, his whole frame recoiling back a step or two with the back of his skull leading, neck craned backwards and shoulders shrugging until they're gathered somewhere around his ears. “What?! How the hell should I know? I've – well, I don't even  _know_ if I've seen her before, I don't remember anything before waking up in that stupid stinking Box yesterday.”

“You remembered him.” Isaac jerks his chin towards Scott, who traitorously turns his wobbly eyebrows towards Stiles as if to suggest that Isaac has a point.

“Yeah? Well  _he_ remembered _me_ first, so why aren't you grilling  _him_ ? Besides, it isn't even—I don't, I just remembered that I  _should_ remember him. He's like a stupid word I can't think of.” Stiles doesn't even bother to try and shave the sharp edges off of his voice, nor does he try to curb his inner sense of vindication when Scott turns those damn reasonable and yet condemning eyebrows on Isaac instead.

Isaac takes a step forward, into Stiles' personal space, and Stiles is abruptly reminded that Isaac has a significant height advantage against him. “She looked straight at you, Whelp, I saw it. She looked straight at you and she recognized you and then she started to scream.”

Despite the height difference, Stiles bristles, puffing his chest out and tipping his chin up to meet Isaac's eyes. Anything he might be about to say to defend himself, however, is interrupted by Scott's hand on his shoulder, a steady pressure pulling him backwards and away from Isaac. “Isaac, relax. If he says he doesn't remember her, he doesn't remember her. It could be complete coincidence, and it's not important right now. Until she wakes up and we know what she does or doesn't know, we've got to just keep going like nothing's changed.”

“But things  _are_ changing.” Isaac hisses, his eyes flicking between Scott's face and Stiles' and back again. “Don't tell me you can't tell. Things are changing. They've never sent us a human and now we have two, two days in a row, and a note that says that girl is the last Whelp we're ever getting.”

Scott shifts his stance, reaching out to put a stalling hand on Isaac's chest. “ _Isaac_ . I  _know_ . Okay? I am well aware that something is not right. But panic isn't going to help us now and it isn't going to help Jackson and Matt and Andy out in the Maze. We keep it together for now, and when they get back we can all talk, together, about the girl and what the note means. For now, just get back to work.”

Isaac shifts, restlessly, like he doesn't particularly  _like_ the answer he's been given, but he accepts it a moment later, slinking off with his head low and leaving Scott and Stiles as the last two standing at the edge of the Box.

“I really don't know her.” Stiles says, defensively, as soon as he feels like Isaac is out of earshot.

A deep sigh works its way out of Scott's chest. He suddenly looks much older than Stiles thinks he actually is, lines usually invisible cut into his face by the stress. “I know you don't, Stiles. I know. It's okay. He's just upset.”

Stiles feels guilty over nothing in particular, finding the intensity of Scott's gaze too much to handle. He bows his head instead, looking down at the ground between his shoes, and tries not to frown too severely.

They start moving almost in sync with each other, attitudes subdued. Scott continues the tour but some his eagerness and shine have been lost for the action, replaced with steady, sure footsteps that look like he is bearing an undue amount of weight. He explains the other jobs in the Glade, who attends to the previously rarely-needed medical issues, who builds new structures and who repairs the old ones. Lunch consists of cold meat sandwiches and sliced apples and although Stiles can't find it in himself to be very excited by the concept of food, he forces himself to eat what seems like a reasonable amount, Scott's earlier words about it being easy to forget to fuel his body echoing in his mind.

They work near the east door, Stiles providing an extra set of hands while Scott helps the Bricknicks out on his 'day off' by repairing one of the fences used to keep grazing cows from roaming off to their death. It's difficult work, work that really demands tools the Pack just doesn't seem to have, but it seems to distract Scott from the problems that have come up with Stiles in the Box yesterday, so Stiles is willing to help. Even if it means that he gets a bruise and splinters in one shoulder, because it also means that he can elicit at least lopsided, grateful smiles from Scott with every exaggerated facial expression he makes to express his discomfort with something easily identified as  _honest work_ . The longer they work, the more amicable the air and the mostly-silence becomes between them. That itch starts up in the back of his mind again, the feeling that if he could just dig a little deeper and push a little harder, he might find memories of why this feels so easy and so right, why it seems so effortless for them to work together, to communicate using nothing more than intuition and vague gestured direction.

It's all shattered the minute someone comes sprinting in through the door on all fours.

Even Stiles, who has only been in the Glade the grand total of one day, knows it's abnormal for a Runner to return so far ahead of the closing of the doors, and can sense from the way Scott suddenly jolts into standing, face going ashen, that Runners coming home alone is a terrible sign. The fence is forgotten and Scott sprints forward, catching the figure up by his arms as he makes his way into the Glade. As Stiles catches up, the Runner claws himself to something approaching standing by virtue of Scott's grip, and Stiles can see that it's Jackson, desperately trying to drag enough oxygen into his lungs to speak. “They're—they're—th...they're....Scott, they're...”

“Easy, Jackson, easy, catch your breath, tell me what happened.” Scott's voice is somehow still even and soothing despite how much tension suddenly sits thick in the air.

“They're dead.” Jackson manages to gasp after a few seconds longer of making the effort. His eyes are wild as they roll around to fix on Scott's face. “Matt. Andy. They're...they're dead. The...the Shades...the Halehounds...Scott, there's Halehounds...in broad...broad daylight...they jumped us, they just...they got us, they got  _me_ ...”

Stiles can see how Scott's hands begin to tremble. The alpha opens his mouth to speak, but he's cut off by Jackson's body giving a sudden jerk. He digs his fingernails into Scott's forearms, and makes a low, terrible noise as he shudders and then goes limp, head rolling forward. It makes him look so much like a broken doll, then, ruined and hanging in Scott's arms, and it makes the blood seeping out of the terrible deep wounds on the back of Jackson's neck so, so painfully obvious.


	9. Chapter 9

Everything seems to freeze up, Stiles' heart hammering in the top of his throat, until Scott looks up to catch Stiles' eyes in desperation. “ _Help_ me! Come on, we need to get him into the Den!”

Stiles jolts into motion, shaking his head as if to clear it, and gets one shoulder under one of Jackson's limp arms to help Scott move his still body. “He isn't...?”

“Dead? No. But he's hurt, he needs to get to the Med-Jacks.” Scott sets a pace that Stiles can barely keep up with, Jackson's body slung between them so that his feet dangle precariously above the ground. Neither of them talks, and they cover the ground quickly, bursting into the Den in a cacophony of sound and dis-coordinated limbs hitting the wall. Isaac, as it turns out, is already inside of the Den, leaping to his feet as Stiles and Scott struggle their way inside. He takes over from Stiles without speaking, bullying him out of the way with the mass of his body, and like a hurricane the three wolves disappear upstairs, Scott's voice raising to call for Erica as they go.

The aftermath leaves Stiles behind in a vacuum of sound, feeling ill-fit in his own body.

It's the first time that he's been left alone since he came up in the Box, and almost immediately, Stiles comes to the conclusion that he does not actually like his own company. The noise inside his head becomes nearly overwhelming in a matter of seconds, layering question after question about who would even come up with a maze like this, why they would stock it with  _children_ , werewolves or not, why it would also be stocked with deadly hazards, why would he and the red-headed girl be sent, as  _humans_ , in the middle of all of it, unable to defend themselves? Why take their memories?

He has countless questions and no answers, and their buzzing crushes in on him until Stiles is certain he's going to be sick. He staggers deeper into the Den to find one of the tables, dropping heavily onto the bench so that he can put his forehead down on the rough wood and knit his fingers behind his skull. The world distorts around him; Stiles isn't entirely sure if he actually cries, but his face and chest burn enough that it doesn't really matter either way. It seems to go on forever, but Stiles has no real way of knowing how much time passes at all.

He's pulled out of the tailspin of his own thoughts by the warmth of a palm against the back of one shoulder. Stiles gives a sniffle that's far louder than he wishes it was—certainly almost deafening to the ears of the werewolves all around—and sits up, scrubbing at his face to try and pull himself back together. He isn't sure how effective it is, but at the very least when he looks up at Scott's face behind him, he sees weariness and sympathy but no judgment. Stiles wonders, abstractly, if Scott ever judges anyone.

“Hey.” Scott says, his voice low and just as worn-sounding as his expression looks. “I know it's rough. But we don't have enough pairs of hands around here, I can't really let you just sit around while everyone else is working.”

Shame blossoms behind his breastbone, and Stiles has a vague understanding that this is not a feeling he experiences often. Everyone in the Pack has been doing their job, concentrating on keeping the Pack as stable and secure as they can, powering through the task of surviving, but Stiles has been sitting in the thrown-together dining room feeling sorry for himself. He makes a huffing, half-disgusted sound and nods, trying to sit up straighter. “Yeah—yeah. Okay. I'm sorry. I just--”

Scott's hand pats comfort into Stiles' bones, then squeezes the ones in his shoulder together faintly like that might keep it in there. “It's okay. The Pack is going to have a meeting. We have a lot to talk about. But I need someone to keep an eye on Jackson and the girl.”

Stiles follows the logic easily enough, shifting to start to stand. “Yeah, I'll do it. I'd probably just make the meeting worse, so it's, uh. It's probably best I don't...”

The Pack Alpha seems grateful that Stiles is in agreement. He gives Stiles' shoulder another pat and then rocks backwards, extricating himself from Stiles' personal space. “It'll be fine, Stiles. Just make sure you go talk to Brett and make sure you get something for dinner, I don't have any idea how long the meeting is gonna last. But if either of them wakes up or anything, I don't care if we're still in the meeting, you'll come and tell us, right?”

It isn't really a question, for all that Scott couches it that way, and Stiles understands that. “Of course, yeah, totally.”

Scott smiles, nods faintly, and pulls away, leaving Stiles feeling simultaneously more grounded and more torn apart than he did before. Maybe this is just what it feels like to buried six feet down.

A short conversation with Brett doesn't make Stiles feel any better, but it does result in him coming away with a sandwich wrapped in wax paper, a thermos of soup and a small bunch of fat, juice-heavy grapes to take upstairs with him. He still doesn't feel particularly hungry but the grapes are comforting in a strange way, the burst of flavor that comes when he squeezes one out of its skin between his back teeth something familiar in the unfamiliar way that all things in the Glade have proven to be. He goes through half of his bunch almost before he's climbed the rickety staircase to the second level of the Den where the sick and injured are being tended to.

Erica gives him a brief, curt run-down of how to tend to Jackson and the red-haired girl, laid out still and side-by-side on a pair of canvas cots, and then she leaves, taking the stairs downwards with more vigor than Stiles would have thought the stairs could even handle. Thankfully, nothing falls apart.

Nothing physical, anyway. Stiles is quite certain he's in the process of falling apart in a lot of other ways.

Jackson looks like hell. Given how robust the werewolves have seemed otherwise, that alone takes Stiles so aback that he more crashes into the chair that Erica had been in than sits normally. Covered in sweat, the wolf is pale to a startling, unnerving degree, dark smudges like bruises occupying both eye sockets. That probably would have been bad enough, but combined with the eggshell color, Jackson's skin is also covered in a spiderweb network of dark lines, tracing the map of his veins for anyone from the outside to see by looking in. Stiles can't help but stare for longer than he should, imagining that he can see whatever poison course and writhe through Jackson's body. He starts to feel sick, a tight angry knot in the base of his stomach like the black sickness in the werewolf's veins could contaminate him just by watching it, and Stiles has to squeeze his eyes shut, turning his face away.

The girl, at the very least, still looks like a human being. While she is pale-skinned, certainly, her complexion still seems  _healthy_ , her hair neatly bundled up over one shoulder, her hands folded neatly over her chest. If Stiles didn't know better, he'd have thought she was simply asleep, her breathing steady and even and deep and a complete contrast from the tortured fish-out-of-water raspy gasp of Jackson beside her. She looks downright beatific.

Stiles finds it curiously difficult to look away from her for long, her beauty a fine-crafted thing that he seems to have a natural inclination to admire. It feels a little obscene, to be nearly constantly staring at a comatose girl, but part of Stiles is aware it doesn't particularly care about what is 'obscene', and the rest of him is aware that he's been  _asked_ to keep an eye on her. Granted, he's been asked to keep an eye on Jackson too, but the slithering worms of his tainted veins still makes Stiles feel woozy and he is certain in a fundamental way that Jackson's condition won't be improved if Stiles upchucks all over him. It's sheer logic that leaves him to look at the beauty rather than the beast.

He's so taken by her, something pressing at the back of his mind about the girl that's almost as naggingly annoying as the sense that he  _knows_ Scott, that it takes Stiles an indeterminately long amount of time to realize that her mouth is moving.

A chill runs down Stiles' spine that he can't quite explain, clutching at the base of it once it's run its course. That doesn't stop him from inching closer, however, the chair scraping hollowly against the floor as he moves it closer to the girl's bed. He has to lean in close, tip his head to the side and nearly press his ear to her plush lips, trying not to put his hands on anything untoward, to have any hope of making out what she's saying. The words rasp as they come out of her mouth, lacking the musicality Stiles feels should be native to her voice, and when he realizes what the first word  _is_ , his breath stops in his chest.

It's his name.

She repeats herself three times while Stiles can't hear her, too distracted by the roar of blood in his ears and the timpani of his suddenly-panicking heart. Eventually, he finds the ability to concentrate on the message, listening to it over and over to make sure he has it right. It never changes, it never falters, it never grows louder, and the girl never shows any sign of actually being awake. She just whispers as if she's stuck on repeat, “Stiles. Move the ash. Stiles. Move the ash.”

Stiles begins to shake, and moves his chair back, as far from the pair on the cots as he can physically get and still be in the room. He's still shoved back into the corner, breathing barely under control, when Erica comes back to relieve him.

No one tells him what was discussed in the meeting, and Stiles isn't sure if that's the cause, effect, or coincidence, but he doesn't tell anyone about what the girl with the halo of firey hair said while she was sleeping. The message came with his name attached to the front of its comet trail, and even if he doesn't understand entirely what it means, it feels like it's private.

It also feels like he's doing something terribly, terribly wrong by not telling Scott.

Yet he just can't quite bring himself to do it. He drifts near the Alpha once the meeting breaks up and the Pack starts to ready for the night, but they don't speak much, communicating in muted murmurs and half-grunts that seem to pass all the information that needs to pass between them. For reasons Stiles isn't quite clear on and definitely isn't fighting about, his hammock gets moved to be strung up neighboring to Scott's, the top strings of their hammocks sharing a post so that they extend out towards each other, crown towards crown.

It feels right. It feels wrong. The opposing feelings tear at Stiles from all internal angles and he remains awake for a long while after everyone seems to have fallen asleep, listening to the sound of Scott's subtle snoring but hearing the girl's voice instead.

_Move the ash. Move the ash. Move the ash._

 


	10. Chapter 10

Morning comes too quickly.

The sun is just creeping over the horizon somewhere, hidden by the walls, when Stiles wakes. Scott's hammock is already empty, and as he finally vanquishes the terrible beast that is his own hammock well enough to stand, Stiles can see the small group of Scott, Kira and Malia standing by the northern door, already prepared to go out into the Maze for their shift. A worm of discontent squirms through his chest, and Stiles can't quite decide if it's guilt or longing that spawned it. Part of him feels the sudden need to break out into a run, catch up with Scott and confess to having heard the red-haired girl speak, but before Stiles can even get his feet engaged in the task, the doors start to grind open and the Runners drop to all fours, sprinting out of sight.

He resolves to keep the secret closed in the cage of his chest until Scott returns, instead.

Without an official assignment, Stiles floats at loose ends through the tense affair of breakfast. The food is good, because it seems to always be good, fluffy, cheesy scrambled eggs and crisp bacon and sliced apples, but the Pack doesn't seem to appreciate his presence. They avoid his table, each group of wolves making sure to have at least one member facing him at all times. He supposes he can't blame them, given how things have gone since his arrival, but he also can't quite help but take it a little bit personally, that bitterness wedging in under his ribs to feed the worm that spawned there earlier. He doesn't push. He eats alone and takes his plate back to the kitchen area and doesn't make a scene despite all his temptation to do otherwise.

Isaac finds him as he's coming out of the Den, steering him to one side with a none-too-gentle hand clasped around the bend of one of his elbows. Stiles hisses his protest, trying to tug his arm free. It's a futile effort until Isaac gets him maneuvered away from the dispersing group of Pack members. “Do you have a job to do, Whelp?”

Stiles can't help but feel annoyed, no matter how justified the question is. He makes a show of pulling his arm back the minute he can move it, rubbing at his elbow with the opposite hand. “No. Jackson coming back kind of interrupted my special tour with Scott or whatever that was, and then I got to spend a few hours staring at some comatose people, and then it was bedtime. It was made pretty clear to me that  _slacking_ isn't acceptable, though, so, uh...”

The expression that crosses Isaac's face makes it look like he's suddenly gotten a mouth full of manure, his nose wrinkling all along its length. “Okay. Well. Since I've got no idea when Jackson will be back on his feet and Scott's going to have to take his shift as well as his own, you can cover what Scott was doing. Lately it's been harvest. Get yourself a wheelbarrow from the shed by the Den and some baskets, and go along the rows. Pick things that look ripe, don't pick things that don't. Be careful, we don't have any space for waste.”

“Yeah, I got it.” Stiles mutters, making no effort to cull the sullen tone from his voice. It's just as well he doesn't, because Isaac gives him little more than a curt nod before peeling away to go do whatever it is that Isaac does during the day. Probably loom around near people and look completely judgmental and superior. That seems like a job Isaac would be uniquely suited for.

It doesn't take him long to find the shed, nor to wrangle one of the wheelbarrow inside and stack it full of empty wicker baskets. The barrow's wheel pulls heavily to the left and has an incredibly annoying, high-pitched squeak which somehow underpins how miserable Stiles' pathetically short experience with life has become. Still, there's something that is simultaneously so deeply frustrating and so deeply soothing about the mindless repetition of squeezing the wheelbarrow between the rows of various plants, testing pea pods and legumes and eggplants and tomatoes for ripeness and either plucking them from their vines or leaving them to grow a little longer. It gives him the chance to let his mind off of its leash.

The question of  _why_ is one that Stiles has had to set aside. Mulling over it doesn't serve any purpose, not really, not while he and the rest of the Pack are stuck in a Maze trying to kill them. It's better to focus on the practical questions like how and leave the philosophy of why for sometime later, when he's nestled into some over-stuffed armchair in front of a fire without any more pressing cares in the world. Right now the focus needs to be on escape and survival, and while Stiles is convinced he's not very good or very helpful when it comes to the latter, he can feel a certain amount of quickness in his mind that makes him think he could be very good at the former if he can just catch on the right pattern.

It feels like it must have something to do with the fact that he and the red-haired girl are the only humans. It feels like it must have something to do with the girl's otherworldly scream and the way she repeated his name and a set of cryptic instructions for the better part of an hour last night.  _Move the ash_ . Stiles frowns, something pricking at the back of his mind like a thornbush. He remembers Scott telling him about the dangers of the Maze—Shades, Halehounds, and lines of ash—but he also remembers Scott telling him that the ash lines can't be moved. What could the girl possibly want him to do, except for the impossible? Had she gotten the message wrong? Had he misheard her? Stiles feels like he's missing just one or two of the key pieces of the puzzle and can't quite make out what the picture is.

Fixating on the problem takes up most of his attention and Stiles tunnel visions, his entire world narrowing down to a small variety of garden vegetables and the conundrum in his head. He's so concentrated on the problem that he almost doesn't hear the approach until it's too late.

It's the vegetables themselves that gives him away, in the end. An explosion of rustling too loud for Stiles to ignore pulls him out of his reverie, and his head snaps up, swinging around to the source of the sound. The sight chills him through like a spike driven from the crown of his skull straight through his body to the ground, and he wastes precious seconds gaping, frozen in place.

It's Jackson. Jackson, whose skin is still deathly pale, whose eyes are both bloodshot and glowing ethereal electric blue, whose network of tar-coated veins seem to pulse and writhe sickly in the noonday sun, whose spit has frothed up into literal foam at the corners of his mouth. Jackson, who isn't running on all fours but who is still running, hands held out from his body with his claws crooked and sharp. He's already taken out three of the pepper bushes with his bull-rush, and that's the only reason he's stumbled. It's probably the only reason Stiles has any chance at all, because there's wild, fanatical murder in Jackson's eyes. He wheezes something that sounds like it might be words, over and over, like a madman's muttering. “It's  _you_ , it's you, it was  _you_ , it was  _you_ ...”

Stiles jolts out of his horror a second later and turns to somehow vault the wheelbarrow. He hits the ground running and adds screaming to the mix within a few yards, arms pumping and then pinwheeling and then pumping again. His imagination helpfully reminds him how unspeakably fast the werewolves are and somehow Stiles finds another surge of speed in him, desperate to keep ahead of Jackson long enough for someone to come to his aid. He isn't even sure who. He isn't picky.

The problem is with focus. Stiles' body isn't made for this kind of exertion, he can already tell. He has to move at his absolute top speed, zigging and zagging like a terrified rabbit, or he has no chance at all of outpacing those wicked werewolf claws. He doesn't have time to try and extemporize or strategize. He doesn't have time to look around to see might be coming to save him—he suspects the answer is actually no one, because the one person who actually seems to give any craps about him whatsoever is deep in the Maze. He can only hope that someone in the pack will intervene on Jackson's behalf, and he can't even contemplate that issue because the distraction slows him down.

Just run.

Run. Breathe. Don't trip. One leg out, as far as it will go, take advantage of their length. Press down, leap forward, bring the other one up before he falls. Breathe.

Stop screaming. Wasting air.

Run.

Run.

_Run_ .

Stiles has no idea how long he runs, the taste of bile and copper in his mouth. He runs until his legs burn. He runs until his lungs feel like they're going to explode, until his throat is raw from screaming and sucking in air and screaming again. He just  _runs,_ proud somehow and in some abstract way that he hasn't pissed himself. He runs, and doesn't  **think** , until there's a strange sound that cuts through the air, a low twang like a broken guitar string.

Instinct hauls him up short and causes Stiles to throw himself to the ground. It isn't graceful and it's only half intentional, but the gesture gets him out of the way just in time for something to go whizzing past his head and hit the wall beside him with the sharp nasal bark of metal on stone. Chest heaving, Stiles flips himself over and scrambles up onto his feet and hands, crab-walking backwards a few steps. He realizes a few things in quick, terrible succession, and the bile works it way back up into his throat, burning as it goes.

First, the thing that hit the wall is still embedded in it:  
An arrow, its wicked-looking arrowhead lined with some kind of viscous yellow goop.

Second, standing on the top of the enormous, ivy-grown wall dominating his field of vision:  
A person in tight leather clothing, face obscured by a hood and a half-mask. All he can see are the person's eyes, sharp and canny brown, but he thinks she is a girl for reasons he can't really put his finger on. She holds a bow with a second arrow already notched, aimed at his face.

Third, and possibly most gut-wrenching of all:  
He's lost in the Maze.


	11. Chapter 11

The archer pulls back the string on her second arrow and Stiles gives a dismayed cry, rolling clumsily to one side of the corridor in a dervish of limbs. The bowstring twangs and the arrow shatters against the ground where his shoulder had been only half a heartbeat previously. Stiles swallows around the terrified lump in his throat, silently cursing himself for rolling away from the wall the archer is standing on instead of towards it, and looks up again, this time only managing to lever himself up onto his elbows. His pulse thunders in his ears, but as he looks up Stiles notices that the Shade isn't holding her bow at the ready any longer. She's staring, her eyes wide, at the place where his body has crammed awkwardly up against the stone.

Despite anything that other people might call better judgment, Stiles takes his eyes off of the Shade and follows the path of her gaze instead.

He's pressed flush against the wall from shoulder to hip, his leg bent at the knee to accommodate his position. That wouldn't be so strange except that Stiles can see, beyond his foot, the dark line of ash that runs in the groove between the wall and the floor. He can see how it runs straight up to the place where his body intersects with it and, impossibly, scatters in a haphazard mess.

Stiles' heart leaps up into his mouth. He ignores the Shade on the wall and instead gathers himself up to lean forward, shaking fingers reaching for the undisturbed portion of the ash line in front of him. He makes contact, feeling fine-grit ash under his fingertips, and instead of being repelled, he brushes his fingers straight through, disrupting the line.

_Stiles. Move the ash._

The scuffle of motion brings his head up, attention snapping back to the top of the wall. The Shade isn't getting a better angle or readying another arrow. Instead, Stiles catches sight of the edge of her dark clothing as she turns and begins to sprint along the top of the wall, springing effortlessly over one of the gaps and disappearing from view.

He stares after her for a long three measures, and then looks back down at the ash line he's ruined with his ungainly flailing.

There's no time to contemplate it, nothing for him to carry the disturbed ash in even he wanted to take it. He has to get moving. He's in the Maze, and so are a lot of things that want to kill him.

Stiles swallows, turning over to push back to his feet. He can't afford to panic. There's a pressure on his chest, like a pair of giant hands crushing in around his ribs, but Stiles forces himself to ignore it and focus on what's right in front of him. He has no idea which door he left the Glade from, much less what direction he started running in. Retracing his steps is not an option. A phrase rattles up from the back of his brain like he's heard it before, although Stiles can't be sure where it came from.

_The only way out is through_ .

He crouches again, just long enough to pick up the larger half of the shattered arrow. The arrowhead is only so much dangerous-looking shrapnel, so Stiles sweeps it to the side of the corridor, letting it mix with the ash line he's already ruined. Standing, he claims the intact arrow as well, wiggling it up and down in the direction of the broadhead's flared blades until he's worked it loose in the stone and can pull it free. He's careful not to cut himself or touch the resin on the arrowhead, instead driving the arrow through one of the beltloops of his pants. He feels hyper-aware of the way it taps against his hip and leg when he moves, but he doesn't have any better ideas for carrying it. It's better than nothing.

All too aware that he has no food and no water in an impossibly enormous Maze, Stiles begins to move in the direction opposite to the way the Shade went. He is careful to keep the same wall to his left, occasionally marking the stone with a deep scratch from the broken arrow shaft still in his hand. It's the only surefire solution to a Maze that Stiles can think of; continue to follow the same wall and eventually, he'll find a way out.

Of course, that doesn't address the fact that if he doesn't get back to the Glade before nightfall, the walls will move and all his careful attention to detail will be for nothing.

Or the fact that he's incredibly unlikely to survive that long.

So he walks. Running seems like a waste of energy while he doesn't have anything to run from, but Stiles can't quite allow himself to stay at a leisurely pace, feeling the pressure of time bearing down on him. The raspy, rattling sound of cicadas shudders through the air and, like the crickets, Stiles finds himself wondering about their purpose, why these seemingly purposeless insects would be included in some artificial scenario where everything else has been so carefully portioned and engineered. Were they important or just noisy red herrings?

Either way, Stiles can't help but feel that the fact that he can move the ash is far more important than even the biggest swarm of cicadas. Scott's voice echoes in his mind, relaying the idea that the ash can't be moved, can't even be  _crossed_ . The ash which blocks off some parts of the Maze from access, the ash that in three years the wolves have not been able to conquer to instead find what freedom seems it must inevitably lie beyond the barriers. He just needs to get back to the Glade and explain, to go out with the Runners and prepared, so that they can finally see what lies in the outer reaches. Something blossoms in his heart that feels a little bit like it might be hope.

That withers on the vine as soon as he hears the howl split through the air, sounding like it comes from somewhere ahead of him in the deep tangle of ancient stone walls. There's another series of howls that respond, buckshot across the area and bouncing until Stiles can't localize them. He can't even tell if they're the howls of friend or foe.

It occurs to him that he doesn't even know if Halehounds  _do_ howl.

Stiles takes to peeking his head around each corner before he rounds it, always turning left, the taste of iron and dry cotton mesh stuck to the roof of his mouth. Progress is slow and he's well aware of the sun creeping along through the sky above him, its judgmental glare unbroken by anything so merciful as a cloud. Time crystallizes like cold honey, hours pass in the space of minutes and minutes pass in the space of hours.

It feels like inevitably when he finally peeks around a corner and catches sight of a Halehound.

The thing is big, bigger than Stiles had imagined, probably almost eight feet tall if it were to stand up straight. It doesn't, it creeps along the ground on its hands and feet, although 'hands' and 'feet' are both strange ways to refer to the near-paws that the creature moves on. Long, wicked claws curl out from each digit, far larger and more dangerous-looking than any of the claws he's seen on the werewolves of the Glade. They click when the Halehound moves, scraping along the stone of the Maze with a sound that sets the hairs on the back of Stiles' neck on end. Its body is dense, dark skin stretched over ropey cords of muscle, patches of long, coarse hair like fur running over the backs of its arms and legs and down the spine in a mane that starts at its head. It has the large, conical ears of a wolf but there's something too-blunt about its muzzle, more like a pug.

It's horrific. It freezes him in place with fear, limbs shaking, unable to tear his eyes way from the sight of it creeping low and crouched, its weirdly smashed muzzle snuffling against the ground. It feels like looking into the skull of death itself when it lifts its head and fixes its glowing blue eyes on the sliver of his face that Stiles has poked around the corner.

He doesn't hear its growl so much as feel it through the ground. It starts to lunge at him and the spell is broken; Stiles turns on his heel at a ninety-degree angle and darts across the Halehound's path, going straight on from a turn he would have otherwise taken. He doesn't expect to gain a lot of ground by forcing the monster to turn a corner, but it feels better than not trying at all.

Death feels like inevitably, too. Stiles sprints flat out, letting his arms flail from the joint of his shoulder like he can use their pendulum swing to fling his body along. It doesn't work, of course. Three seconds into his run, the Halehound is around the corner, skidding into place behind him and rebounding off of the repulsion of the ash.

Seven seconds into his run, the sound of claws gouging into stone tells Stiles that the beast has already halved the distance.

Ten seconds into his run, he can see the dirt kicked up from the Halehound's hands as it pulls them forward gust past his feet.

Twelve seconds into his run, a weight strikes him between the shoulderblades and drives him into the ground. Stiles' face hits the stone and he sees stars, he tastes blood, he feels the cold certainty that he's about to die.

Fourteen seconds into his run, a thunderous roar shakes the Maze around them and a blur streaks in from over his head to knock the Halehound off of his back before it can close its teeth around his neck.

Stiles spends another five seconds sprawled out flat on the floor of the Maze trying to hold back tears. Two more blurs pass over him as those seconds stretch.

Chest heaving, Stiles rolls over onto his back. The Halehound is being overwhelmed by the angry, coordinated attack from Scott, Malia and Kira, a sudden and dangerous mass of claws and fangs and glowing, feral eyes. Stiles staggers back up onto his feet, watching as Malia darts in quick and low to slash her claws across the Halehound's throat, timed flawlessly with an acrobatic kick from Kira that snaps the thing's head to the side. They fight as if they've been fighting together for years, and for the first time since Stiles arrived, the term 'Pack' seems to be more than just a word. They fight together seamlessly and seemingly without need for communication, pressing the Halehound from all angles, driving it back inch by inch to give Stiles room. It makes him wonder how terrible the attack yesterday must have been, to have taken out two members of what must have been a fine-honed squad of werewolf fighters.

It's fascinating and beautiful in some terrible and blood-spattered way straight up until the point that the Halehound gets a lucky strike in on Scott and sends him spinning to the ground. It lurches past Kira and Malia and jabs its claws straight into the back of the Alpha's neck. The sound Scott makes is inhuman in its pain.

Stiles sees red.

The very idea of Scott in danger, of Scott in  _pain_ , makes something snap deep within Stiles' mind. He screams, high-pitched and feral, no dignity in it, and tears the arrow at his side free of his pants' belt loop. He doesn't think. He doesn't hesitate. Stiles takes all his fury at this assault against the  _one person_ in the entire world that's made him feel welcome, settled,  _good_ , and he launches himself forward, still screaming.

Stiles plunges the arrow into the eye socket of the Halehound.

It goes in about halfway before the arrowhead strikes something solid in the Halehound's skull and the terrible beast jerks backwards. The shaft of the arrow snaps away, leaving just the fletching in Stiles' hand, and the Halehound throws itself backwards, battering into Stiles' chest with one shoulder. He's sent flying, slamming into the wall behind him as the Halehound rears up onto its hind legs, wrenching its claws free of Scott to instead scrabble at its face, tearing at the flesh above and below its eye.

It wails, a horrible sound that's utterly inhuman and somehow also terribly human, and goes crashing back the way it came, careening into the walls as it goes. Stiles gives chase for a few feet, bellowing furiously. “Yeah, you  _run_ , you motherfucker! I hope that poison eats your goddamn  _brain_ out, you psychopath, you--”

He becomes aware suddenly that one of the girls is yelling his name, and Stiles turns at Kira's hand on his shoulder to regard the scene behind him.

Malia has Scott's head in her lap, showing what seems like surprising tenderness as she strokes the hair back from his temples. There's worry clear on her face and on Kira's, and Scott himself is still, breathing shallow, bleeding from a row of vertical puncture wounds that run down the back of his neck in line with his spine. Malia's voice is naturally a little husky, but right now it sounds downright tortured. “It's too late.”

The adrenaline rush of victory gets punched right out of Stiles' lungs by those three words. He takes a short gasp in before he can find his voice. “What do you mean, it's too late?”

She gestures to the wounds on the Alpha's neck, not quite touching them. “The Halehound got him. It's too late. He's going to go through the Changing. Except...”

She looks up at the sky a moment later, gauging the angle of the sun. “...we wasted too much time looking for you. It isn't going to matter anyway 'cause there's no way for us to get back to the Glade in time. By the time the sun goes down there will be a whole pack of them out here with us. With Scott slowing us down—we're going to die.”


	12. Chapter 12

Stiles understands, objectively, what the words mean, but he just can't get them to fit into place, to match his perception of reality. He can't accept them, defiance like bile rising up in his throat. “We're _not_ going to _die_.”

“Uh,” Malia's entire expression stretches out lengthwise with the force of her disdain, her lack of belief in his assertion. “ _Yes_ , we  _are_ . Nobody survives a night in the Maze. Once the sun goes down, the Halehounds come out, and they'll tear us apart. Unless you think you can magically scare off a whole pack like you did with that last one.”

“No.” Stiles repeats, feeling his throat constrict as he looks down at Scott's form. His skin is pale, which shouldn't be  _possible_ with Scott's complexion, and Stiles can't quite help but feel like he's failed something. “Just—okay. Okay. If...if we were right by the Glade, if we were going to be there through the night, would he survive without any kind of...medical intervention? What did it  _do_ to him?”

Malia gives a quiet growl and opens her mouth to snap at Stiles, but Kira waylays her with a hand gently lifted in Malia's direction. Malia flicks her eyes between Kira and Stiles and then relaxes, just faintly, shoulders rounding backwards. Kira turns to Stiles with an apologetic wince already perched on her youthful features. “It triggered the Changing in him. It's not like wolfsbane poisoning. That's the thing that needs the antidote. This—it'll take a few hours or a few days but he'll pull through if nothing else happens. He might not be quite the same, but he'll live.”

Bobbing his head in a short nod, Stiles puts both hands on his hips, eyes on nothing in particular. His focus flicks from ivy to stone to ash to the arrow fletching in his hands, and he makes a thoughtful noise in the back of his throat. “So the Halehounds come out at night. What about the Shades? When are the Shades active?”

“Only during the day.” Kira explains, her tone top-heavy with mild confusion. “They're human, so they don't see in the dark the way we do. They don't show up every day, but they never show up at night.”

Stiles swallows around the bitter taste in his throat and nods again, starting to move towards Malia and Scott. “Okay. Okay. Come on, help me—come on. We gotta get him up. I'll get one of his arms. One of you needs to be free to, uh. Ninja. Do the ninja thing.”

There's a look that passes between Malia and Kira that has enough doubt in it that Stiles could probably have literally tripped over it, but he ignores it. Instead, he jolts himself into motion, crouching next to Malia and Scott and pawing at the Alpha's limp body until he can hook one of his shoulders under one of Scott's. He ignores Malia's growling,  _tries_ to ignore how sweaty and molten-hot Scott's skin feels to the touch. “Come on,  _come on_ , we don't have time to mess around, you've just got to trust me.”

He doesn't know where the grunting  _sound_ comes from, but Stiles rocks back onto his heels, staring first at Malia and then at Kira, meeting and holding their eyes without flinching to show his resolve. Malia lifts one corner of her lip to show one of her incisors, but she doesn't lunge for his throat. It feels like progress. “We have literally nothing to lose. Come on.  _Trust me_ . I don't want anyone to die. I can  _do_ this.”

This time, when Stiles starts to try and stand, Malia stands with him, carrying at least half of Scott's weight on her shoulder. Like before with Jackson, Scott hangs limply between them, largely unconscious, but this time anxiety ticks in place of his pulse. He can't listen to its rhythm. He doesn't have time.

Instead, Stiles turns his eyes to Kira. “Okay. Take us to the nearest dead-end in the Maze.”

He can see the skepticism in her body language, but she starts to move. Kira might be petite, her general carriage and step light, but she moves with the same deadly purpose as everyone else in the pack, a clear and obvious predator. She ranges ahead and behind of Malia and Stiles as they carry their injured Alpha, but she keeps up constant verbal contact, making sure they know where they're going even though Stiles is pretty sure Malia doesn't need any directions.

Three turns and over a hundred torturous yards, and finally they find themselves surrounded on three sides by the massive, imposing walls. Stiles is red-faced and out of breath at this point, but he still motions towards one of the corners with his chin, panting out wheezy words. “There, there, get him into one of the corners.”

“Stiles,” Malia is impatient, disdainful, even as they lower Scott's limp form down to the ground, “The walls move after dark. Our flanks aren't going to be protected once the sun is down.”

“I know.” Stiles huffs out. He doesn't bother to explain any further as he detaches from Scott, because at this point it's easier just to  _show_ them what he can do. Pacing out enough to give them a decent amount of space to move around without being piled onto each other, he reaches down along the seam of the wall and gathers up the ash there. Careful and diligent, he redirects the line towards the middle and then turns back to the other side to mirror the motion, so that the two lines meet in a somewhat crooked point in the middle. There's a certain tension that snaps through the air when the two halves meet, and although Stiles knows he can move across the line without trouble, he knows equally well that whatever mystical force keeps the wolves from being able to cross has now locked itself into place. “There. Then even when the walls change, the ash will still be there. That's enough to repel a Halehound, right?”

He turns back around to the blank, staring faces of Malia and Kira.

The silence stretches out, uncomfortable and strained, and Stiles looks over his shoulder at the ash lines he's diverted, mouth pressing into a thin line that makes his lips seem to all but disappear. “I know. I think it's because I'm human. I mean you've never had a human here before, right? You'd have no way of knowing whether or not humans could mess with the ash. But I...there was a Shade, earlier, she tried to make me into some kind of arrow pincushion and while I was trying to avoid that, I realized I could move it around and I figured this is better than just sitting around waiting to die, right? So, uh...”

He trails off, moving his hand in a loose, circular motion, unsure how to justify himself any better. Luckily, he doesn't have to. Kira smiles, a little bit of the weariness dropping off of her face. “You did well, Stiles. You're right. Halehounds can't cross the ash either.”

Stiles lets most of the tension in his body out in a rough puff of air, expelling it from his lungs and casting it away. He moves away from the pencil-tip point of ash to flop onto the sun-baked stone of the Maze floor next to the wolves, scrubbing at his face with both hands. He's exhausted, feeling like his skin is drawing up too-tight over his features, like an invisible hand has grabbed him by the back of the neck and pulled him taut over his own bones. Cicadas punctuate the silence with their strident song, emphasizing the throbbing in his skull.

Once they have all settled in, leaning against each other despite the heat, Kira gathers up the backpacks that she, Malia and Scott had carried into the Maze earlier. She hands Stiles one of the bottles of water immediately and then starts to spread out what's left, taking stock of their stores. Three bottles of water beyond the one that Stiles is already helplessly pawing the cap off of, desperate for the relief on his parched throat, a couple of loose apples, wax paper packets of jerky and dried fruits and nuts. Stiles sucks down a third of the bottle of water before the weight of the liquid in his empty stomach starts to feel like a rock. Kira makes him eat a few pieces of the jerky and then the rock transmutes to lead.

Scott's condition doesn't seem to improve much. Malia's attempt to get some of the water into him mostly just results in both of them getting wet. He remains pale and sweat-soaked, twitching at random intervals like a puppy dreaming of chasing rabbits. Something about seeing the Alpha laid low and in such a vulnerable position claws at Stiles' insides, turning any flavor that had been in his mouth into sharp bile and the coppery bite of blood. “...So what's happening to him? You told me earlier the Halehound triggered the Changing but that doesn't really tell me crap. What's Changing? What happens? Why won't he be the same when he comes out of it?”

Kira's features are good at hiding distress; her face just seems to naturally try to take the edge off of anything terrible and tuck it in under a veneer of good cheer and calm. The fact that Stiles can see that she is upset at all is more unnerving than he thought it would have been. “We don't really know what happens, exactly.” She explains, her voice quiet like distant windchimes. “It's something they do when they get their claws into your neck like that. Something about it gives back or triggers memories.”

Stiles blinks, and then frowns, glancing between Scott and Kira without understanding. “Wouldn't being able to remember things be a good thing?”

The sadness in her dark eyes loses its fathoms and becomes depthless. “Apparently it isn't. Nobody is the same after they get their memories back. They're Changed. That's why we call it the Changing.”

Whatever else he might have asked about the experience is cut off by Malia's voice suddenly in the collapsing twilight. “...Stiles. He's saying your name.”

Blinking, Stiles refocuses his attention, eyes moving back to the profile of Scott's face as it lays against Malia's legs. His hearing isn't as acute as the wolves' is, but it doesn't take long for him to realize what Scott is muttering, tone tense and despairing.

_Stiles. No, don't. Don't. Stiles, Stiles, Stiles. Stiles, don't go, Stiles, please..._

It's starting to get a little nauseating, how it feels like everything strange that keeps happening revolves around him.

Malia seems to have no patience for it. She moves, shoving Stiles around with one arm inside their kennel of ash until he's in a position she determines is satisfactory. He's about to object, annoyance rising fresh up his spine, when she moves  _Scott_ , dumping the sweaty, limp Alpha straight into Stiles' lap. She arranges him so that Scott's face presses lightly against Stiles' stomach and the rest of him curls vaguely around Stiles, knees tapping against the small of Stiles' back. The restlessness and the breathy rasp of Scott's breathing immediately settle, the other boy's weight and warmth spreading out over Stiles' skin any place they make contact. It feels  _right_ , somehow, and Stiles' heart climbs the ladder of his chest as he reaches one hand, pale and faintly shaking, to use its fingertips to stroke the hair back from Scott's forehead and temples.

Scott makes an impossibly warm, contented sound, and Stiles hopes neither Kira nor Malia will call him later on how his pulse trips over itself and tumbles head-over-heels for a few yards.

Exhaustion catches him before he can pull himself back together and pulls him under the murky waves of sleep.

 


	13. Chapter 13

The sound of the walls moving wakes him, so loud there's no space in his skin for anything else. Stiles tries to find his hands to clap them over his ears but it does nothing at all, so he settles for curling up in a whimpering ball around the warmth in his lap. The vibrations run through the ground and rattle up through him until Stiles thinks he's going to fall apart.

When it's finally over, two of the walls of their little cul-de-sac have moved away, leaving only the wall that was the right-hand side of their alcove in place. Stiles and Scott have become some kind of yin-and-yang during sleep and the pain of the moving walls, heads on each other's legs and curled in a lopsided circle around their respective middles. The light has failed entirely, leaving only the starless night sky to illuminate the area for Stiles' weak eyes, but even so he's pretty sure that Scott's condition has not improved. He can still feel the sweat and unnatural heat pouring off of his skin, hear the labor of his breathing and the mutter of his voice running over words that Stiles can't quite make out.

He can also hear the chorus of howls that start echo from deeper within the Maze. He can't help himself but sit up straight, making sure that all of Scott's arms and legs are within the ash circle, regardless of how impossible it would be for things to be otherwise.

It doesn't take long for the pack of Halehounds to find them.

There is no preamble, no build-up like before, no tension to be cut with a knife. There is a Halehound suddenly rounding the furthest corner, charging the group with a rumbling growl like it's a steam engine. Stiles' heart starts to race, and despite everything, he tightens his grip around Scott's torso, eyes fixed on the dull glint of the monster's eyes as it bullrushes in.

The moment of truth arrives.

The very nanosecond that the Halehound tries to cross the ash barrier, there's a flare of blue light, sudden and brilliant. It dazzles Stiles' eyes, and for a few heart-pounding seconds he has no idea what at all is going on. Then it happens again, and  _again_ , and Stiles realizes slowly that the light is some kind of energy, generated upwards in a sheet from the ash every time the Halehound tries to cross it. The beast doesn't seem to understand that it can't  _cross_ the barrier, and throws itself at it over and over, causing a constant firework scattershot of blue-white light across Stiles' vision, blowing out his pupils and his nightvision until all he can see is spots of color and nothingness.

He can still hear the Halehound, and the other ones that join it, hitting the wall made by the ash over and over like giant bugs against a zapper.

It might have been his own last-ditch idea to let them hold out a night in the Maze, but Stiles finds it almost impossible to have faith that the ash will hold. Painfully aware that any errant piece of his body could break the line and ruin everything, he keeps curled up into a tight ball, parts of himself tangled with the liquid-steel heat of Scott's body and held shaking as far from the edges of the circle as he can manage. Every time he hears one of the Halehounds back up for another run, claws scrabbling against the stone, Stiles half-convinces himself that it's going to be the last time, that this time will be different, that the animals trying to eat them will finally break through the wall of blue fire and sink their claws deep into tired, pliant flesh.

The noise and his imagination's ticker-tape animation of all the horrible things that will happen when the Halehounds finally break through keep him up all night. Hours move at an unrealistic pace, a terrible amalgam of stinking, rotted-meat breath and deafening roars and strobe-light flashes of supernatural light.

The terrible assault against what feels like an incredibly unsure fortress goes on for so long that when the Halehounds stop throwing themselves indiscriminately against the barrier, it almost comes as a shock. Stiles rubs at his eyes with the knuckles of one hand, waiting for the flash-phantoms to fade out of his retinas. The more his vision returns, the more he is certain that there is actually more light in the ambient air, predawn gearing up towards the sunrise. He can see that there are four of the brutish creatures pacing the exposed sides of the ash lines, fur in varying colors of rust and iron. They move like animals and not like men, for all of their strange and oddly human qualities, communicating with each other more with flicks of their big ears or low, gutteral grunts. They keep their eyes on the four figures inside of the ash without flinching, and Stiles finds it hard to look into those wild animal depths for long.

He never sees or hears the signal that summons the Halehounds home. They simply quicken as a single unit at some point, all turning to look back into the Maze with their ears pricked. Similarly united, they turn from the wolves in their self-made cage and bound off around the corner, the sounds of their travel quickly fading.

Stiles counts out what he thinks must be a half an hour before he lets himself believe that they've actually made it through the night.

As soon as the sun is close enough to risen that Stiles can see reliably, they pack up. It quickly becomes obvious that the fastest way to travel is going to be to have Malia and Kira take turns bodily carrying Scott, so Stiles gets laden down with two of the three packs, as much weight as can be consolidated concentrated in the one that he can fit snugly against his back and over his shoulders. They check straps, the set of the Alpha's ragdoll physics against Malia's back, and with a sharp intake of breath, Stiles decides the illusion of safety can stretch no further. After all, if he can see, so can the Shades, and Stiles has no confidence that their arrows will be as easily repelled by the ash. He stretches out one faintly shaking foot and breaks the line.

There is no conversation as they run, which is just as well, because it takes all the air Stiles has in him just to stay upright and keep his body tipping forward in the right direction. He's reminded yet again that he's in no way conditioned for this kind of work out, his method of running quickly turning into something more akin to falling aggressively forward and hoping he can get his legs under himself in time. Somehow, he manages not to trip up.

Somehow, he manages to be more of an asset than a liability when they have to switch which of the she-wolves is dragging Scott's body along, when they have to ration out the water and the apples carefully to avoid dehydration or cramps.

Somehow, he manages to make it back to the door of the Glade with the others in one piece.

They come staggering in through the threshold like survivors of front-line shelling, which Stiles supposes is appropriate given how they spent their night. He wants to be yelling, screaming for the Pack to pay attention and come attend to their fallen Alpha, but he has no extra air or room in his chest for the words. All he can do is drag himself forward, gasping noisily, as they start towards the Den.

As it turns out, it doesn't take long for the Pack to notice anyway. As they struggle their way inside, the Pack members abandon their jobs one by one to crowd around, voices raised into a sea of questions so interlocked that Stiles can't tell individuals or discrete words from each other. It sounds like the noise of a gaggle of geese and he has to repress the inappropriate urge to explode into hysterical laughter at the notion. Erica and Boyd appear as if they've teleported and Boyd stoops just long enough to sweep Scott up in his arms, much like how he carried the red-haired girl before. It makes the wounded Alpha seem so small and so fragile, and Stiles wishes he had enough energy to claw through the gathered pack and follow behind. He doesn't.

Instead, he's stayed by a hand on his shoulder, turning to face Isaac's astonished expression. Liam is just behind him like a shorter echo, and both of them have eyes so wide and so blue it's almost comical. “What the hell  _happened_ ?”

Stiles half-searches Isaac's face, confused. “He was attacked. By the Halehounds. They did something to his neck. Kira and Malia called it the Changing.”

“Not that.” Isaac dismisses almost immediately, making a curt and frustrated gesture with one hand. “I know about the Changing. I meant, why were you in the Maze, and more importantly, how did you survive the night?”

“Well, I was in the Maze because resident psychopath Jackson tried to eat my face and he chased me into the Maze.” Stiles doesn't even really try to keep the dryness out of his voice. “By the time I'd finished executing Operation Run Blindly For My Life, I was so far in I didn't know where I was or how to get out again.”

For a moment Isaac looks like he's going to see if he can't actually just backslap Stiles' face off, but Kira intercedes at exactly that moment, sliding her shoulder in between Stiles and a hundred and eighty pounds of mightily annoyed curls. He feels a little like he should be fighting his own fights but also like Isaac can probably turn him into julienne fries in under an hour, so he's mostly content to let Kira's eternally optimistic expression to work in his favor. “We heard the howls saying he'd run out into the Maze. Scott immediately decided we were going to go look for him. When we found him there was literally a Halehound on top of him, so we went in against it. During the fight it got to Scott's neck, but Stiles had one of the Shade's arrows, and he got it right in the Halehound's eye. I'm pretty sure he killed it.”

Isaac blinks slowly, attention turning back to Stiles as if he's seeing him for the first time. Kira bounces up on her toes, eyes widening. “But that isn't the only thing. We were sure we were dead anyway, 'cause we were too far out and it was too late in the day. But Stiles had us move to one of the dead-ends, and then he  _closed the ash circle_ . Himself. He moved the ash and formed a barrier around us that lasted the night. The Halehounds couldn't get to us.”

This is the point at which everyone in earshot takes a half-step or more backwards. Tension shimmers into the air and suddenly Stiles realizes that being ignored by the entire Pack was  _way_ preferable to being looked at as a threat. “He did  _what?!_ ” Isaac's voice comes out like a bark, sharp and edgy.

Kira only nods, calm as still water. “He moved the ash. He saved our lives, Isaac.”

Rocking back on his heels, Isaac sighs, his shoulders moving downwards with the motion of the air like it's sucked some essential structural support out of him. “This is nuts. Everything is going nuts.” He looks down at nothing at all, at the collective toes of all the shoes gathered around, and rubs at his forehead with the back of one thumb. “Your red-headed girlfriend woke up while you were lost in the Maze, Stiles. I kept trying to tell her that you weren't coming back, that you were all going to die during the night, but she was convinced you'd survive. And she was right, which I don't have any idea what to do with.”

They're all quiet for a long time, staring at their feet or out over the Glade, no one at anything particular, the concept of eye-contact is just too much of a burden to cope with. Minutes pass, and then Isaac pulls himself up by his shoulders like a puppet that's just had its strings jerked taut. He blinks his eyes, focuses, and then looks down at Stiles as if he's a new thing, something to finally consider rather than to discount with annoyance. “Jackson has finished his Changing, but he attacked you, which is against the Pack Rules, so he's in the Cage until he settles down. Since he wouldn't stop screaming that it was all your fault, he's probably going to stay in there for a while. He won't get out, so you don't have to worry about him. The girl's been downstairs in the Den since she woke up. I'm going to go talk to Erica about Scott.”

Kira lingers after the others have left, long enough to put her hand on Stiles' shoulder. She smiles at him when he lifts his head to focus on her, and her words take him so off-guard he's surprised he doesn't lose his balance. “Thank you.”

Stiles stands alone in the Glade after that for what seems like almost an hour.

Eventually, he stirs himself into motion again, letting his feet drag him where they will. It's not really a surprise when he finds himself opening the door to the Den, squinting until his eyes until they adjust to the change in light. Like Isaac said, the red-haired girl is seated near Brett's kitchen area, a frown marring her almost otherworldly pretty features, looking down at the surface of the slapdash table as if it might have some kind of answer to whatever it is that's making her frown. She looks up at the sound of his entrance, eyes bright, and although she doesn't smile, her expression  _does_ change to something that Stiles would have better described as 'smug'. “Stiles.”


	14. Chapter 14

Stiles stares at her face for a long time. He's fairly sure that it's longer than is really appropriate, longer than he should, but he'd been hoping that some part of her features would trigger some kind of memory. He was desperate for anything, an idea of her name, her favorite color, even just the familiarity that had overwhelmed him when he'd first met Scott. _Anything_.

There's nothing at all, and eventually Stiles has to shake his head, spreading both arms out helpessly with their palms held upwards. “I'm sorry. I don't remember you. I don't have any idea what your name is.”

“Lydia.” The girl says, primly, folding her hands on the surface of the table and flicking her hair behind her shoulder with an economical move of her head. It looks like the kind of thing she does a lot, look superior and controlled, and while most of what he's learned about himself tells Stiles he should find that infuriating, mostly he just thinks it looks really  _good_ on her. “And I know that you can't remember anything. It seems to be a common theme around here.”

Stiles takes a long breath in and moves to sit across from Lydia at the table, where he can see her face and watch her reactions. There's something captivating about the way she moves and carries herself. A tigress and nothing less. “Can  _you_ remember things?”

Lydia smiles in an indulgent way that makes Stiles feel like she's taken the measure of his mind and found it wanting. “Of course I can remember things. You can remember things too, or we wouldn't be having this conversation. But, I can't remember anything about my past, which is what I assume you're actually getting at. They took our memories before we came up in the Box.”

“What do you mean,  _they_ took our memories?” Stiles frowns, eyebrows forming a deep furrow down the middle of his forehead.

“The people who made this Maze, obviously. You couldn't have possibly thought that your amnesia was a natural condition,  _please_ . They left you with exactly what they felt you should remember and took everything else.” She stands, then, and leans across the table. Stiles has about two seconds to be distracted by the view this suddenly affords him before Lydia has picked up one of his hands and slapped it onto the back of his own neck. “See?”

Stiles has three seconds of a knee-jerk petulant response before he feels what she must be referring to under his fingertips. He starts to tremble, just faintly, the minute he feels it, but he traces his fingers over the skin anyway, up under his collar. There were  _scars_ there, scars so fresh they might better be referred to as wounds, their edges rough and ragged to the touch. No pain, and Stiles was fairly sure they weren't infected, but they were still  _there_ , lined up in a neat row along the divots of his spine.

Just like the wounds left on Jackson and Scott.

His mind unravels trying to figure out the consequences and the correlations. Obviously, he'd been in contact with a Halehound before. Obviously, it had gotten its claws in his neck. It had done whatever it is they do and it had edited his memories. It had taken from him some of the most fundamental building blocks of  _a Stiles_ and left him with a hollow shell, a sharp tongue, and a label. It means, it  _has_ to mean, that there are Halehounds beyond the Maze, too.

Something terrible settles into the pit of Stiles' stomach and he wonders for the first time if  _getting out_ is even the best thing that they could be doing.

“Exactly.” Lydia says, leaning back to settle on the bench of the table primly. She sits like a queen, like it's just ingrained in her muscle memory, and Stiles wonders if in that world beyond the mist that's swallowed their memories, if she's high society. “They don't want us to remember. I'm sure they did it to all of the werewolves, too, but of course they've healed the wounds.”

It's something, in all the rushing around and chaos and being chased by aggressive and somewhat murderous werewolves, that Stiles has still given a lot of consideration. Granted, it'd previously all focused on things like 'why would they put children in here' and 'why would they try to be killing us?' but now there's a new element which Stiles can't help but feel is also pertinent. 'Why take our memories? What are they trying to hide?' He gives a low groan, leaning forward to rub at his temples in slow circles. “This doesn't make any sense. Are they sadists? That's got to be it, doesn't it? I mean, there's no real other reason to put a bunch of werewolves who are also idiot teenagers into an unsolvable Maze full of murder and  _also_ take their memories away. There is no actual reasonable reason for that. They've got to be lunatics. Maybe they're watching this on hidden camera and think it's really--”

The idea of some faceless perverts staring into screens of the pornographic violence of the Maze, hands down their—no.  _No_ . It makes his stomach roil.

Lydia leans forward, her expression intent. “But the Maze isn't unsolvable any more, is it? Now you and I are here. The variables have changed, because we can move the ash lines.”

Shaking his head, Stiles lifts a hand to try and rub the tension out of his forehead. “How do you know about the ash lines if you've been in a coma?”

“I've been awake for  _hours_ , I _talked_ to people, Stiles. How else would I have figured it out? How did  _you_ figure it out?” The scorn sits naturally in her voice, too, he decides. Still a tigress.

Stiles leans his head down to press his forehead against the tabletop, knitting his fingers in the hair behind his head and using them to massage at the scabbed-over wounds he's suddenly aware of on his neck. “This is crazy. This is all insane. I'm going to wake up and this'll all have been one crazy long dream and everything'll be fine. I've got a Mom and a Dad and a dog and this is just my messed-up subconscious trying to cope.”

He knows it's a lie. He knows it even before he feels Lydia's hand on his shoulder, patting softly. Stiles wasn't aware that someone could be vaguely condescending while patting a shoulder in supposed consolation, but he learns differently soon enough. “Sorry. I'm pretty sure this is the real world.”

“Well it's  _messed up_ .”

“I'm not arguing that.”

They sit in silence for a long time. It feels like a blessing just to be able to keep his head down and be  _still_ for a little while, after all the terror and the physical effort of the night before. Lydia moves her hand off of his shoulder after a while, but Stiles doesn't move until he's made to. He's pretty sure he drifts in and out of consciousness. It isn't the most comfortable place to nap, but by God, it's a  _nap_ , so it'll do.

The time for the evening meal drifts in, and so does the Pack. No one berates Stiles for having spent the afternoon half-asleep on the mess hall table. Instead, Brett comes by and deposits a bowl of thick, rich stew, some crusty bread and a glass of raw milk at his elbow. Stiles eats it all, but he doesn't really taste any of it. Given Brett's previous track record, Stiles chooses to give him the benefit of the doubt and assumes that it was all very delicious. At the very least, it makes his belly feel full and like he has any hope at all of some warmth and strength seeping back into his bones.

He walks out of the Den into the gathering evening with no idea what to do with his hands, like they had a habit once that he hasn't been keeping up with. Stiles ends up settling on keeping rhythm against his thighs with his fingertips, unaware of whatever song he's tapping out but tapping it anyway. Nervousness swells up and he doesn't understand why until he notices that the rest of the Pack is standing stock-still through the Glade like meerkats, tension rippling through them and the way they communicate with each other in some sublinguistic way he can't understand.

Distant howls rip through the twilight air and it's with a sudden cold grip of fear to his heart that Stiles realizes that he didn't hear the Doors close. A single glance confirms his terror.

_The Doors didn't close_ .

Panic grows down through his veins and makes roots of his feet. Memories in blue fairy-fire flicker up out of the back of his mind, the image of the Halehounds slamming against the ash barrier, and suddenly he's running, before he even realizes what he's doing, sprinting for the nearest Door. He can hear the Halehounds already in the Maze, heckling like hyenas. If he listens to them for too long he won't make it, and Stiles can't afford to think that. He can't afford to think of the destruction that will happen if the Halehounds get into the Glade. He closes his mind to memory and logic and just  _acts_ .

He's never moved so fast in his life. All his previous problems with running seem to have disappeared, and for some blessed change in pace it's almost as if Stiles has all the time in the world. He skids out past the threshold of the nearest Door, dropping into a crouch as he arrives. He scrabbles with both hands along the lines of the wall, kicking up ash and then tamping it down again, moving the line so that it runs across the doorway instead of along it. He's aware that he's going to be trapping the Pack inside, but more than that, Stiles is aware that he'll also be trapping the Halehounds on the outside. It's worked before. It has to work again.

It  _has_ to work. He can't accept any other answer.

He works clockwise from the first Door, long gazelle legs springing him over rows of vegetables and the wide farrow places in the Glade as he goes. None of the Pack seems to understand what he's doing, and it doesn't matter if they do. All that matters is that he protects them.

One Door. Two Doors. His heart feels like it's going to explode in his chest, it's beating so hard. Three.

Stiles has just gotten to the last Door standing, lungs like crepe paper in his ribcage, when he looks up into the darkness of the Maze to see a Halehound's eyes reflected back at him.

He's too late.

There's no space for screaming. Stiles spins in place, losing his balance, going down onto his hands and clawing at the ground with them until he can shift his momentum back the way he came. The Halehound gives a loud, braying sound behind him and Stiles sprints flat out for the nearby forest. He has no advantage on flatland, all he can hope is that he can get into the woods, maybe get up a tree that won't support the beast's weight. It's a slim chance, but at least it's a chance.

Somehow he makes it to the treeline. Stiles will never be sure how. He slams into the first tree with both hands and rebounds off of it, flinging himself bodily onwards when all his body actually wants to do is collapse. It's hard to see in the dark of the woods, almost impossible for him to split his attention between running at top speed  _and_ dodging trees that seem to pop up out of the ground like jacks-in-boxes  _and_ trying to identify a tree that has low enough branches that he's got any hope of shimmying up into it. All the while, he can hear the Halehound crashing through the underbrush behind him, going  _through_ where he has to go over or around, getting ever closer and ever closer.

His luck runs out, because it has to, because the two and a half days of life he can remember has never been that easy. Stiles catches the toes of one foot on something on the forest floor and there's a cry of dismay as he goes down, tumbling ass-over-tincups through the leaves and other detritus on the ground. There's an embankment he might have never noticed otherwise and Stiles goes flailing down it, the Halehound skidding right behind, and he's so aware that this is it, there's no way he'll get back to his feet, much less outrun this wild-eyed creature bearing down on him. His back slams into something hard and rough, killing his momentum, and despite himself Stiles brings both arms up as if to shield his face, screwing his eyes shut. He's going to die here, and he isn't even going to die with dignity.

The Halehound closes in.

And it doesn't take the killing blow.

Stiles stretches the moments out over his timpani heartbeat, trying to swallow it back into his chest. Eventually, the ellipsis of his own death is too much for this curiosity to take, and he cracks his eyes open.

The Halehound is crouched nearby, not over him exactly but near enough that he could touch its matted fur and its blunt muzzle if he really felt like reminding it that he's there. It isn't paying him any attention; every fiber of its being is focused on something just behind and just above Stiles, so intently that the Halehound is also shivering with a violence that Stiles can see echoed in the tips of its ears.

Slowly, he cranes his head around to see what it is that he rolled up against that's so caught the Halehound's attention.

It's the graveyard that he visited earlier with Scott. Specifically, he's cracked the back of his head on the pitiful little half-coffin that Scott previously identified as belonging to the first Alpha, a girl named  _Laura_ .

Gradually, Stiles becomes aware that the Halehound is making a pitiful whining noise, like a dog with its leg in a trap. He drags his attention back to the beast and the strangest thing starts to happen.

It starts to transform.

Stiles sucks in a sudden breath, eyes wide. He can't look away, for as grotesque as it is to watch from such a close, high-definition vantage point. The Halehound just sort of _condenses_ , becoming smaller in almost every dimension. The ragged hair recedes into its body, its ears slide down its head, its back-jointed legs realign with terrible, gut-wrenching cracks and snaps. The dark coloring to its skin bleeds away like ink being diluted with water, revealing human skin beneath. Dirty, bloody skin, but human skin nonetheless. Its claws retract, its features pull and flow until it looks nothing like a wolf at all.

The eyes are the last thing to change, the off-putting neon-electric blue glow flickering and then sputtering out to leave a color that Stiles can't rightly make out, not in the dark, not even when the thing that was a Halehound not thirty seconds ago turns its head and stares straight at Stiles, clearly as astonished and confused as Stiles himself is feeling.

It's a man. A very, very naked man with dark hair, thick eyebrows and a full beard.


	15. Chapter 15

They're caught in some terrible sort of staring deadlock, each too astonished and completely out of his depth to be able to break the gaze. Stiles isn't sure he really wants to break it _anyway_ , given how painfully aware of the man's lack of clothing he is. He thinks he's a little older than the people in the Glade, body heavier-set and more settled into the notion of adulthood. Eventually, the man looks away first, to stare down at his own hands in astonishment. It's so obvious that he isn't used to _being_ a man that Stiles' heart lurches a little bit, in a way that he can't entirely attribute to the fear.

He still doesn't move, worried that he might remind the ex-Halehound of his presence and promptly be less a few essential organs for his trouble.

Voices bounce in from outside of the forest, calling his name. Stiles can hear, moments later, the sound of people moving through the trees, and shortly, Kira explodes into the little clearing that surrounds the graveyard, Isaac and Liam quick on her heels. He can see that she wants to ask what's going on and whether he's okay, but the question dies in her throat as she realizes that there's a stranger crouched there with his back to her, staring in shifts between his hands and the coffin. In any other situation the squeak that her voice becomes might have straddled the line between adorable and infuriating. “...who is this?!”

“Derek.” The strange man rumbles suddenly, fingers curling loosely closed against his palms. He sounds surprised that he's answering, or maybe surprised that he has an answer to give. “...My name is Derek.”

The silence that follows isn't very enlightening, so Stiles fills in with, “About half an hour ago, he was a Halehound and trying to eat my face.”

“He was a  _Halehound_ ?” Liam shoulders forward, staring disbelievingly at the freshly-identified 'Derek' with a open-mouthed frown until he seems to realize belatedly that Derek doesn't have any pants on and recoils, nearly snapping his neck with the force of his sudden attempt to look away.

Derek leans back, settling onto his haunches and using both hands to cover his modesty. Stiles decided this was a human enough gesture to indicate he's probably no longer in mortal peril and starts to slide gracelessly, to the side, skidding down the rest of the embankment until he's away from the coffin and Derek. He pops up onto his feet still without grace, wobbling to one side and then the other before he finds his balance. He's so  _sore._ His legs are probably about to fall off.

Derek swallows, bowing his head a little bit and letting his eyes skip over nothing like he's trying to put together pieces of a puzzle he can't even entirely see. “I...can't remember. It's all so blurry. There was so much _anger_ , and pain, and endless running...”

“That's basically normal.” Isaac says, eyes fixed carefully on the space above Derek's head. “Halehounds turning into real people, not so much, but the amnesia thing is normal. If you couldn't change back before, what brought you back now? Don't tell me it was Stiles,  _please._ ”

Stiles has equally little desire to hear that this is  _another_ point on which he is special and changing the way things have been for three years, so he's almost relieved to see Derek look back towards the coffin sadly. “No. It was her.”

“Laura?” Isaac sounds more confused than condescending, which is novel.

“She was my sister. I don't know how I know. I just know.”

Nobody says anything for a long time. Nobody knows what to do with that information at all.

Eventually, Kira is brave enough to scoot a little closer to Derek, putting a gentle hand on the hook of his elbow. “We should at least get you some clothes.”

Derek considers this, too, before grunting an assent and rolling up to his feet. Even in this form, which Stiles can only assume has been locked away from him for a long time, he's all muscle and dangerous hunter's grace. It's not at all difficult to see the wolf still lurking under his skin. As if to remind himself that he is nothing so majestic, Stiles turns to follow the others out of the woods and immediately trips over something he can't see on the forest floor.

He never makes it quite to the ground. Instead, Stiles finds himself cuaght by the scruff of his clothing, by the back of his neck, dangling briefly before he can get his feet under himself. Steadied, Stiles looks over his shoulder expecting to see Isaac, but it instead greeted with the dim impression of Liam's face, thoroughly unimpressed. There was something a little extra shameful about being caught by someone the size of Jiminy Cricket. “You dumbass, watch where you're going.”

Stiles lets his annoyance get the better of him, as he so often does. “Hey, I don't know if it's occurred to you, Wonderpup, but I can't actually physically see in the dark like you can.”

“Oh my God, how did you even survive a night in the Maze?” Liam grumbles, but he doesn't actually move from Stiles' side while they are in the forest. He keeps one hand near the joint of Stiles' left elbow and warns him, loudly and with an intentionally obnoxious bray to his voice, of every piece of still, unremarkable landscape that might jump out at him in the night. Stiles almost thinks it might have been less embarrassing to just have fallen over constantly. Or maybe crawled out. He probably could have crawled out and saved some face.

Breaking out of the treeline and back into the Glade proper makes a dramatic difference in Stiles' ability to see. He reclaims his arm with a tug and ag rumble, but almost immediately his eyes fall on the Door that Derek had come barrelling through earlier, and his expression goes long and thoughtful. “Were there any more?”

“Huh?”

Stiles gestures to the Door with the flap of one arm as they pass it, eyes straining to make out the details of the ash lines there. He can't quite manage it. “Halehounds. Did any more of them make it into the Glade, or was our new friend Derek the only one?”

Liam blinks, eyes oddly luminescent and almost gold in the poor light. He looks at each of the other Doors in turn as if Stiles has asked him to solve some kind of difficult math equation. “No, it was just him. We could hear them just outside, trying to get in, but something kept stopping them in the Doorways. At some point they all just got quiet and then...left.”

Stiles lets his shoulders sag with relief. It had worked.

They get back to the Den to findt hat someone, thankfully, has found pants and a shirt to put on Derek. They don't quite fit him right, which Stiles assumes is just a natural consequence of the Glade not being prepared for such densely muscled full-grown men. He estimates the clothes must have come from Boyd, or there would have been no chance of them fitting at all. Unsurprisingly, there is a small group of Pack members gathered around Derek, wide-eyed like he might snap their necks at any moment but also drowning him in a tidal wave of questions. Stiles thinks of a great dane surrounded by puppies. He's stopped being surprised by what he remembers.

Liam catches the direction of his gaze and his expression turns into a leer, like he's caught Stiles out doing something he shouldn't. The strange thing is, Stiles almost feels like he  _has_ . “See something you're into, Monkey?”

“ **No.** ” Stiles is surprised how much it comes out like a growl. “I just can't get my head around it. I mean, it's sick, what they did to us, but turning people into actual monsters is a new level of disturbed.” They'd turned people into mindless beasts. The Halehounds were  _people_ . Stiles thinks of the one deep in the Maze that he drove the arrow into, and his mind's eye transforms the image first into an anonymous face and then, for reasons Stiles can't work out, into Scott laying dead somewhere in the Maze, face contorted in agony and smeared with blood, the jagged broken end of an arrow ruining one of those warm brown eyes.

Stiles feels like he's going to be sick.

Unexpectedly, Liam's response to the sudden roiling storm in Stiles' stomach is compassion. His face softens a little, and he reaches up to pat awkwardly at the back of Stiles' shoulder. “You couldn't have known, Stiles. Whatever you had to do out there to survive, you couldn't have known they were people, and you saved the life of two of my Packmates plus my Alpha.  _They_ never stopped being people. “

It makes sense. It doesn't settle his gut entirely, but it  _makes sense_ , and Stiles tries to cling to that, closing his eyes to avoid having to watch Derek navigate through the Pack dynamics with dopey confusion. They seem to come naturally to him, which makes sense. He's a werewolf, after all, just like everyone else. Everyone except Stiles and Lydia.

Always the exception, never the rule.

The air inside the Den suddenly seems too thick and stifling, so Stiles gives Liam a watered-down version of an already thin smile and turns to emerge back into the cooler night air. His eyes struggle to readjust and then they finally do, he can make out the outline of Lydia's back. She has her arms wrapped around herself protectively, eyes on the north door as it lays across the Glade. Stiles comes up behind her, clearing his throat to try and assure that he doesn't take her off-guard.

“Did you come up with that on your own?” She asks as he moves to stand beside her, gripping his own elbows and looking out over the same nothing she's peering at. “Blocking off the Doors with the ash?”

“Yeah. That's how I held back the Halehounds in the Maze. I didn't have any better ideas, I thought maybe it'd work again.”

Lydia turns her face towards him faintly, nodding her head as if in approval. It seems like something that should be monumental, Lydia giving her approval to anything. “It was smart. It was very smart. You probably saved a lot of lives tonight.”

Stiles sighs, pressing his mouth into a thin, uncomfortable line. “The Halehounds are werewolves too.” He says, in case Lydia has missed that information somehow, like it's some kind of a truth bomb that he expects to rattle the foundations of her world view. She doesn't so much as flinch. “I killed one, out in the Maze. I'm pretty sure. I killed a somebody.”

“No.” Lydia says, firmly, lifting one hand to hold one of its fingers out, extended in Stiles' direction. “You didn't kill a somebody. Whoever put them in there and forced them to forget they're even people killed somebody. The way I see it, you  _resurrected_ someone with your trick in the forest.”

“There was no trick, Lydia, he turned back on his own. I was just kind of in the way.” Stiles looks from the Door towards the forested corner of the Glade. It had all been happenstance, pure luck that had caused him to run to the Door near the woods last, pure luck that had inspired him to run  _into_ the woods. There'd been no skill at all.

For not even the tenth time in the small space that Stiles had known Lydia for, she turns to look at him with such an arch, far-away expression that he can't help but feel judged and lacking. He shifts his weight uncomfortably under the scrutiny of his gaze, but all Lydia actually  _does_ is move to press her hand lightly to the back of his shoulder, voice surprisingly gentle. “You look exhausted. I'll go close the last Door off just in case. You try to get some sleep, okay? You've done enough today.”

He  _is_ exhausted, feeling like he's about to fall over where he stands. His body aches in protest of everything he's put it through lately, his mind itches like stinging nettles from sleeplessness. He needs rest. He knows he does. He just also feels like something horrible will happen if he tries.

It isn't like Stiles has a choice. He nods, trying to give Lydia a smile he doesn't really feel the support structure for, and starts to drag himself around the Den to the place where the hammocks have been hung. By the time he gets to his, he has no energy to do anything else but throw himself face-down on the hammock and grow still.

Without the sound of Scott's breathing beside him, it takes an eternity for Stiles to fall asleep.


	16. Chapter 16

This time, the hand that wakes Stiles lays squarely in the middle of his back. For three seconds, he thinks it's Scott for some reason, and he lingers, opening his eyes slowly. He has such a crick in his neck, popping like ants in a fire, as he turns to set his gaze on the hammock next to his. There's no one in it. Stiles frowns.

“Stiles, get up.” A voice says behind him, and he realizes belatedly that the hand touching him couldn't have possibly been Scott's because it's a  _girl's_ .

Abruptly, he doesn't want to move. Stiles' shoulders bunch as he braces his hands on either side of the hammock, holding it in place inexpertly as he flops around far enough onto his back to see the the face of the person touching him. Daylight is thickening like curdling cream around Erica's face and golden hair. She has dark circles around her eyes, like she hasn't slept enough, and Stiles imagines that's probably the case given the sudden and steady stream of people who have needed medical attention in the last few days. He remembers her telling him that she didn't get much practice in the past, and guilt bubbles up as tar in his chest before he thinks to tune in to what she's saying to him. “..tt's awake. He's asking for you.”

“What?” Stiles slurs. The words are there, right on the verge of making sense, but he can't get them to click into place. Nothing seems quite connected to itself this morning.

Erica sighs, reaching down with both hands to grasp Stiles' shirt, not entirely ungently, and start to pull him to his feet. “I  _said_ , Scott's awake. He wants to see you. Come on, rise an' shine, Alpha gets what Alpha wants.”

He wishes the information brought a sort of crystal clarity that made it easier to navigate his way to Scott, but it doesn't. He feels just as adrift as before. Stiles knees the back of someone's head accidentally as he tries to follow Erica out of the minefield of sleeping werewolves.

Someone shoves a mug of hot tea into his hands as Stiles passes into the Den, and he buries his face in the steam, trying to pull his mind around himself long enough to manage both the rickety staircase to the second floor  _and_ a cup full of scalding water without causing himself irreparable harm. He gets through it, and tromps ungainly down the hall behind Erica to the same room that had previously held both Lydia and Jackson.

Now, the only soul in the room is Scott's.

He looks remarkably better than the last time that Stiles saw him, seated upright in the only real bed in the room with his hands folded on the blanket over his lap. His color has returned, and although his hair seems a little extra curly around his face, it's no longer  _plastered_ to it with sweat. Stiles doesn't even try to help the small, relieved smile that comes over him at the sight of Scott breathing evenly and normally, his eyes open and aware and flitting between Stiles and Erica with real agency in them. Scott smiles, too, but it's a tired smile for Erica, the kind of smile one dismisses people with. It's still genuine. “Thanks, Erica. Why don't you go get yourself some breakfast? Me and Stiles might take a while.”

Erica hesitates just long enough to be obvious about her decision that Stiles probably can't do Scott enough harm, even in this weakened state, to be a worry, and then she nods, retreating from the room and pulling the door closed behind her.

Scott stares at the doorknob for a stretch of time that twists around like warm putty. Then he looks down at the floor, back at his hands, at nothing at all, before finally leveling his gaze on Stiles. It isn't rough, exactly, but it's heavy in the way a mountain is heavy, just as solid and immutable. “I remember you.”

The words send a jagged, broken shard of adrenaline through Stiles' chest. He wants to be excited about them, he wants to thrill under them, but Scott's voice has made them sound like they aren't a good thing at all.

“I remember  _us_ .” Scott clarifies while Stiles is busy dissecting the subtleties of tone. “In bits and pieces. From before.”

Stiles lets a breath out of the hollow place in his chest that was just carved through by anxious anticipation. “Okay.” He accepts the information, cups it in his mind like a fragile egg because he's still not sure what's going to hatch out of it. “That's...good? Isn't it? I mean, to have some of your memories back.”

The alpha smiles, faintly, and looks down at his hands while he fusses his fingernails against each other with a faint click-click of sound. “Yes. And no. It's...complicated.”

“Oh. How complicated?”

“I think we were lovers.”

Part of Stiles wants to be surprised at the information. Part of Stiles  _is_ surprised at the information, the part that controls his suddenly thickly swallowing throat, his upwardly mobile eyebrows, his hands which are abruptly too shaky to be trusted with tea. The rest of Stiles very decidedly  _isn't_ . That part of him relaxes, drops its weight downwards and outwards like a satisfied smile, determining that this makes  _sense._ It explains the familiarity that even medically induced amnesia couldn't erase, it explains how free and calm he feels around Scott when nothing about his situation is either free or calm, it explains how Scott and Scott's infuriatingly adorable lopsided face pop into Stiles' mind at the strangest moments. It explains why Stiles thinks Scott's face is  _infuriating_ and  _adorable_ in the first place. He also has no idea what to say, afraid of Scott's reaction to his own memories. “I, uh...”

Scott's hands move, stroking faintly over the blanket next to his legs. “Would you come closer? Please?”

It's frankly remarkable how easily Scott balances the authority of a true leader with the amicability of giving those around him space and choice and autonomy. He forces nothing and yet gets everything in return. Stiles doesn't think twice about leaving his mug of tea untouched at the mouth of the room and coming to sit on the edge of Scott's bed.

“I don't want you to think I'm trying to force you into anything if you're uncomfortable.” Scott says, voice steady.  _Reasonable_ . Like they're discussing the lunch menu. “Whatever we were before, if you want to be something new, I'm...okay with that.”

“I don't know if I want to be something new.” Stiles says, and it feels like the sharp edge of too-much honesty, although he knows it's just enough. “I don't remember what our something old was. I...” He pauses on an intake of air, trapping his bottom lip behind his upper teeth. Reconsiders and tries a different angle. “What were we like? What do you remember? Maybe it'll...”

Scott shrugs with one shoulder, allowing the unsaid rest of the sentence to stay unsaid. Maybe it'll jog something loose in Stiles' head. Maybe it won't. He speaks quietly anyway, like he's retelling an ancient fairy tale. “We were friends, first. Before anything. Before everything. I'm pretty sure. Really, really good friends. The  _best_ kind of friends. I feel like I could—did—trust you with everything. I don't remember how it turned into...you know. I think maybe it was just a kind of natural progression. It feels like it was easy.”

Stiles listens as Scott speaks, eyes studying every part of the other boy's face in fine detail; first the long line of his nose, then the angle of his eyebrows, the light in his dark eyes, the motion of his lips over the words he chooses to use. He looks his fill and he looks hard, hoping that some or any of it might stir something in his own mind, but nothing does. The sense that he's known Scott for four days and also for forever is exactly the same as the first time he heard Scott's voice. He finds his imagination trying to fill things in and call them memories and Stiles immediately pulls up short, shaking his head. He doesn't want a fabrication to take the place of what should really be there. “I don't really...”

“It's okay.” Scott sounds like it really, truly is, even though Stiles thinks it's about as far from okay as it can be. “I didn't really expect you to.”

The thing is, it doesn't really matter. Stiles already knows. He already knew. He can tell, just from having watched Scott and been near him in the Glade, the effect the alpha's steady strength and big heart have on him. He doesn't have to be told he should be in love with Scott because he was already halfway there only three days in, easily taken by the casual honesty and the earnest caring that seem like such an extreme counterpoint to Stiles' own inability to care as much or as strongly as he thinks he should.

It makes it so easy to give in when Scott's eyes trail down to Stiles' mouth. He sits up straighter and then leans in, gaze jumping between Stiles' lips and his eyelashes a handful of times before he asks, he actually  _asks_ , “...Can I...?”

“ _Hell,_ yeah.” Stiles breathes, pushing his upper body forward with both of his arms. He closes the distance and kisses an alpha werewolf square on the mouth.

Scott's mouth just fits against his, soft and warm and yielding. Stiles can't help the quiet noise that slips out in the space between his teeth. Scott brings one hand up to cup the back of Stiles' head, fingers deep in his hair, and fills that space up with his tongue. The kiss is hot and deep and tender and raw, it's everything, it's a jackhammer in his chest driving all of the breath right out of his lungs. All of Stiles' thoughts come untied and spin out into the ether.

He burns with the need to breathe and only pulls back enough to do it against the skin of Scott's cheek. Scott's voice is deeper than usual as it rumbles into the room. “Stiles...Stiles, why'd you do it?”

It takes so long for Stiles to even find his mind to lock it back into place. “...what? Why'd I what? Save your life?”

Scott's smile is sweet against his skin. He shifts his grip lower on Stiles' neck, shaking their heads together in unison. “No. Why'd you put us in here? Why did you betray us all?”

His lungs become the vacuum of space, and Stiles suddenly doesn't have the air to speak. “...Scott, what, I don't--”

“Then  _figure it out.”_

Stiles gasps throatily. There's a flash of bright red light in his periphery, and then his neck is on fire, four points of liquid pain lancing down in the spaces between his vertebrae. He can feel it in every nerve, every cell of his body.

_Pain_ .

His vision goes red, and then white, and then there's nothing at all.


	17. Chapter 17

He is immediately caught up in a whirlwind of pain, confusion, and his own memories. Stiles is helpless to navigate it, instead thrown through the wind and from point to point like a cow in a tornado.

A lateral shift, and he's a small child in a sandbox, dirt in the lines of the smile on his face, building a lopsided sandcastle to match the lopsided jaw of the dark-haired little boy in the box with him. He feels happy in a way he thinks adults have lost access to.

Another, and he's watching a man in his middle years bow over at the waist, in agony and not gratitude, trapped inside an isolation cell. Hair starts to extend down the man's face but he looks up and meets Stiles' eyes, voice shaky as it distorts. “I'm proud of you, I'm so proud of you, don't forget--”

A disembodied voice digging through his shattered memories. “I'm sending them in.”

Sitting in a white room with Lydia, the lights too bright, with designs and blueprints spread out over the table between them. “We have a limited amount of space, Lyds, but even in the final stage they can solve problems, we need to keep them on their toes.” And Lydia is sliding a picture of a tree towards him, voice cool and implacable, “We use the ash.”

A distant man with cold blue eyes feigning sympathy puts his hand on Stiles' shoulder, pressing down with the heel of his palm, and Stiles feels like his skin might crawl right off of his bones. “We're going to beat this. That's the whole point.”

Huddling close to Scott's form as Scott breathes, heavy and uneven, curled around his own middle and holding his hands out in front of him as if he doesn't want to touch them. Stiles rubs each of Scott's knuckles in turn and helps him chant while his friend's eye glow gold, “Alpha, Beta, Omega. The Sun, The Moon, and the Truth.”

Hiding around the corner in some long hallway as a woman and a man fight, their voices tense. Stiles is certain they don't know he's there, but their shouting still doesn't make as much sense as he wishes it would. There's the sharp, short sound of skin on skin, and a tall woman with long black hair storms past without ever seeming to see him.

Scott, younger and somewhat softer-bodied, his hair long and curling at the edges, fear in his kind eyes as he pulls his shirt up to show Stiles a terrible wound in his side.

A hallway full of glass chambers, fogged over, their contents indistinguishable. A feeling of dread that fills his chest like wet mist.

Scott, wrapped around him, Scott inside him, Scott everywhere, Scott every _thing_ , mouth hot and wet and gentle on the skin of Stiles' neck as he breathes, “It's you, it's you, it's you, it's you...”

Flying backwards as the cold-eyed man pushes him away with one arm, the other one supporting Scott's limp form as if it weighs nothing. Stiles can see Isaac crumpled on the floor beyond them, but he's more busy screaming at the top of his lungs, words that taste like betrayal, “This isn't the plan!”

Lying awake in a bed in a dark room, listening to overlapping howls in the distance. Scott's voice, closer, like a net to catch a fallen acrobat. “We'll help them, Stiles.”

A brown-haired girl with eyes like a hawk passing him a key as they jostle each other in the hall, her voice low and intent, “Make it count.”

The black-haired woman with her hand on his shoulder, gesturing with the opposite one to a sprawling campus of buildings and lush green grass. Her voice is smiling, although her face is not, and it seems backwards. “Welcome to H.A.L.E. Headquarters, Stiles. I'm sure you'll be a wonderful asset to us here.”

Endless sketches of mazes, hundreds of designs, some overlapping and some not, all pinned haphazardly to a wall in an otherwise featureless room. Yarn in red, yellow, green and blue connecting the dots when Stiles strings them out, like henna tattoos. Lydia telling him there's something missing that they aren't seeing and frustration boiling in his fingertips.

Both of his hands brought up, middle fingers extended, to press on the inside curve of the glass chamber he occupies, face caught in a snarl. Triumphant defiance singing in his heart as the mist rises, obscuring the face of the person on the other side, distorting the sounds of their screams and their palms slamming into the glass barrier over and over again.

Darkness.


	18. Chapter 18

The darkness gains depth, and then becomes shallow, and Stiles realizes he's awake before he opens his eyes. He doesn't really want to be awake, so he lays still, lids rolled down, and tries to pretend for a little longer. Just a little bit of time, to try and settle back into his body and let the dizziness fade.

The tornado is gone, having broken open the vault holding many of his memories with its ferocity, but most of them don't make any sense. They've been scattered and left totally out of order, Stiles in the middle of the wreckage trying to make sense of what he's been left. He tries to sort them out carefully, but he finds very quickly that he doesn't have that kind of patience. Instead, he's forced to mentally bullet point what he does think he knows into a patchwork timeline.

He and Scott have known each other since they were very young, possibly their entire lives. At some point, their friendship turned into one involving frottage, but that was less relevant to anything, really, than the fact that Scott was also injured, somehow—bitten?--and given the disease causing the condition that Stiles would have otherwise described as  _lycanthropy_ .

They went to the H.A.L.E. Headquarters together, to help research a cure, but for what specifics Stiles doesn't remember. He knows he met Lydia there, and that he and Scott were kept more separate than he liked; he was expected to stay with Lydia. He knows without a doubt that  _they_ designed the Maze they were currently stuck inside. What he's less sure about is  _why_ , or for what purpose. He has a dread suspicion in his heart that it wasn't for this.

He can see the face of the man with the cold eyes perfectly in his mind, turn it this way and that as if it were a 3D model but find no real mercy in it. The details are fuzzy, faded or fading, but there are a few things Stiles is clear on.

Werewolfism is a disease without a known cure. The Maze, which Stiles and Lydia designed, is somehow related to cure research, as is H.A.L.E. At some point, the cold-eyed man betrayed Stiles, and consequently, Stiles betrayed him right back.

It's not exactly a comforting thought, that he's capable of that kind of one-upmanship. It's also not really a surprise.

He becomes aware of the breathing of someone else in the room. His body starts to feel restless and ill-fit, and despite how much he'd like to just lay where he is and not deal with the outside world, he knows it's only a matter of time before the force of his will breaks against the force of his natural twitchiness. Stiles makes a low, unhappy noise in the bottom of his throat and gives in, opens his eyes.

He's laid out on his back in the bed that Scott had been in earlier, notably not on one of the cots. He has no idea what time it is, given the patchwork blinds in the room have been pulled shut; the room is lit by lantern and the flickering of the flame inside it makes Stiles' mind want to assume it's late in the day. The room smells a bit unpleasantly even to his weak nose of sweat, layered over the other scents of broth and tea and soap. He's not in the clothes he started in, and Stiles decides immediately that he doesn't want to give that any more consideration. It's better if he just doesn't know.

In the corner of the room, Scott is seated, leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped tight. He looks up, not surprised exactly, as Stiles starts to squirm himself up the wall behind the bed into something approaching sitting. “You're awake.”

“Against my will and better judgment, yes.”

Scott's mouth pulls up around a muted smile, and he looks down at his fingertips. “Good. You've been out for three days. I was worried I'd...” He trails off, letting his hand drop, and Stiles can tell what the rest of the sentence might have summed up to. His mouth feels like cotton and he isn't sure if it's a physiological or a psychological response to having been asleep for so long.

He remembers something, almost spontaneously, from just before he went under with the pressure of claws in his neck, and Stiles lets the answer to a stale question pop out of him without warning. “Scott, I don't think I meant to.”

It's a little too out of left field. Scott's eyebrows furrow and he looks back up at Stiles. His face wears confusion like a weapon and it makes Stiles feel bad, it makes his teeth ache. “You asked me...as you put me under, I guess. You asked why I betrayed everyone. You told me to figure it out. I'm pretty sure I didn't mean to.”

Scott lifts his eyebrows, considering Stiles' face. He analyzes whatever he sees there slowly and it puts Stiles on edge, convinces him that something has been broken in the relationship he barely remembers. The pressure of it has just about started to crush in on his heart when Scott offers a subdued smile and a single, deep nod. “I believe you. I do.”

“I sense a but.”

Scott sighs, standing and moving to the side of the bed. He drops his weight on it heavily and its frame protests with a loud squeak. “But we're still stuck inside of it. We need to get out. Now that you're awake...you need to hit the showers, and get some real food in you, and then we're going to get everyone who has gone through the Changing together and figure this out. When you're ready, there's a shed next to the Blood House that's usually locked. We'll wait for you there.” He shifts slightly in Stiles' direction, hesitating slightly before he reaches down to brush his fingertips across the knuckles of one of Stiles' hands. The touch doesn't linger, but it makes Stiles' heart do complicated acrobatics anyway.

It's something.

The showers are old-fashioned in a way showers really shouldn't be, powered by gravity and not big on things like hot water, but Stiles still manages to feel a little more human once he's gone through them and put on a new change of clothes.

He gets a lot of strange looks from the Pack when he comes down the stairs, both hands fussing with his damp hair. None of them try to speak to him or engage him in any real way, and it all makes Stiles feel more on-edge than before, pairing badly with the jelly-edged way his limbs don't want to quite move properly. He feels weak and scrubbed-raw in a way that isn't purely physical, stretched and reformed in a shape that isn't quite right. He moves quietly through the Den, making his way to the alcove leading to the kitchen area.

Even Brett's genial response to everything seems to have lost its patience with Stiles. He still gets  _fed_ , certainly, but he's given the packed lunch and ushered out the door like he's the late white rabbit and his very important date is somewhere far way from Brett's orderly kitchen. Opening the package on the way to the shed reveals the wafting smell of corned beef, which Stiles is suddenly sure he doesn't like. He eats it anyway, trying to just stuff it through his mouth fast enough that he doesn't really have to taste it.

The door to the shed opens to a dim, crowded room and many pairs of eyes turned up towards Stiles. For a split second, he has an incredible urge to just turn and sprint the other way, but the fact that most of the people in the room are werewolves means that'd be as impractical as it is childish. Instead, he steps inside, closing the door behind him and waiting for his eyes to adjust. There's a circular table in the middle of the room, covered in papers with various designs and maps. Starting at his left and moving clockwise around the room, Stiles can see Derek, Lydia, Jackson, and Scott. He's grateful that Jackson is opposite the table from him, because Stiles is pretty sure Jackson still wants to murder him and gargle with his warm blood. “Uh. Hi...guys. I didn't realize Lydia'd...”

“I haven't.” Lydia cuts in immediately, leaning forward to brace her hands on the table. “But I think it's pretty evident that I'm part of whatever's changing in this little game the Creators are playing, and God knows you boys could use a little more brains in your corner. I've been helping them for three days while you were napping, so I don't want to hear it.”

Stiles sneers at Lydia without any real venom in the expression, and then he tucks his chin in towards his chest, coming up to take his place around the table. A few of the papers he recognizes as patterns fro the Maze. “Okay. So what're we doing?”

“Comparing notes.” Scott says, moving to mirror Lydia's stance against the table. “If we compare all of our memories, we'll have the best chance of making sense of what's going on. All of us got a few pieces to the puzzle, maybe if we're lucky we'll be able to make a picture out of it.” He looks at each of the face in turn, around the table, before letting his voice roll on further. “A lot of what I remember is me and Stiles, which isn't...really going to help, except that I know we arrived at some kind of testing facility together.”

“H.A.L.E. Headquarters.” Stiles cuts in, crossing his arms over his body. “They were testing for something. They thought we were gonna be useful, but, I don't know, they tried to keep us apart a lot. I do know, or...remember, or whatever...you weren't born a werewolf. You were bitten.”

Scott frowns, one hand moving towards his side as if the echo of a memory, but Derek distracts him with a shift of his weight forward. “I know that much. Not all werewolves are born, some are bitten. Some have control. Some don't. Some lose control.” He doesn't need to say the 'like I did' for it to show on his face and the way he won't make eye contact with anyone in the room.

Jackson scowls, first at Stiles and then at everyone else in the room. “I remember the H.A.L.E. place. I remember them putting me in a tube and sending me to this hellhole. Doesn't anyone else remember that? 'Cause I do, and I remember  _this asshole_ being right there. Seriously, why isn't  _he_ in the Cage, he's working for them!”

Stiles' hands tighten on his own biceps, and he leans forward a little with his upper body, too hair-trigger to ever think of how bad an idea it is to exacerbate an angry werewolf in an enclosed space. “Hey,  _buddy_ , if I'm some kind of evil genius and I wanted you dead, don't you think you'd  _be_ dead already?”

True to his nature, Jackson growls and starts to come up over the edge of the table. Scott grabs a fistful of Jackson's shirt and pitches his voice so low there's some kind of dangerous, supernatural reverberation to it that fills the room. “Jackson, calm down. He's on our side now, let's just forget about anything that might have happened before.” His eyes turn to Stiles a second after Jackson starts to relax, still burning Alpha red. “And you're not helping, Stiles. We've got to work together to get out of here, so if you guys could stop measuring dicks or trying to kill each other with them for long enough to do that, that'd be great.”

The tension in the room relaxes a little bit, and Stiles rolls his shoulders, letting his arms dangle loosely by his sides. “He's right, though. I mean, a little bit right. The Maze was Lydia and me, we designed it. We designed it to keep werewolves in. But I don't think we designed it for this. This doesn't feel right. I mean, it's bad enough that it kind of felt like we were designing a fancy zoo cage, but a death trap? I don't think we ever meant for this. I think somebody else messed with us like they messed with you.”

Scott studies Stiles' face for a few seconds before turning to reach for the papers, spreading them out over the table as best he can. There are a lot of them, and some of them hang a little over the edge, but he gets them scattered enough for Stiles to recognize that they give a pretty good impression of the Maze over the course of a month, in the positions of the walls they can access at any given time and the portions cut off by mountain ash. “This is what we've got worked out for what the Maze looks like. Derek tells us that the Halehounds get released into the Maze at night. He worked with Lydia to figure out where we think their nightly access points are, which he says are marked with this symbol.” Scott's finger taps one of the papers, then, indicating a tight spiral drawn at seemingly random places in the map.

Stiles frowns and leans in closer to the maps, scanning his eyes over the shifting patterns in the walls and the ash. “It looks like, during the day, all of those access points are covered with the ash lines, but never with the walls.”

“Which means we could never get to them to examine them closely and see that there might be an exit there.” Scott concludes.

Jackson makes a frustrated noise in the back of his throat, dangerously close to sounding condescending. “But we know the ash stops the Halehounds. How would they have gotten out into the Maze if they were behind ash?”

“The Shades.” Lydia notes simply.

Eyebrows furrowing, Jackson turns to stare at Lydia, clearly lacking understanding. He doesn't demand an explanation with his voice, but his face does it for him.

She makes a disgusted noise to match his previous frustrated noise. “The Shades. You already knew the Shades were human. None of you have ever been anywhere near these access points in the dark, you've always come back to the Glade in time to be inside when the Doors closed. Obviously, the Shades and the Halehounds are working together,  _obviously_ , the Shades move the ash, just like Stiles did.”

All eyes turn to Derek, who shrugs. “All I remember is running the Maze. I don't really remember how we got in, or where we went when we left. There wasn't a lot of  _me_ there.”

“Okay, so we know that there are definitely ways out of the Maze at these points. That seems like a hell of a start.” Stiles peers down at the maps, lips pulled into the cavern of his mouth as he thinks. “And with me and Lydia here, now, we should be able to  _get_ to them. So why don't we...go? And do this? At least take a couple of people and see if we can get out that way?”

“Any of those spots are probably going to be crawling with Halehounds even during the day, not to mention the Shades.” Derek warns, voice low.

“Well, what, our other option is just to sit in the Glade behind the ash barriers until we all grow old and die, and hope  _their_ humans don't fuck with it? No, thank you.” Stiles grumbles, half under his breath. Not that there's any such thing as  _under his breath_ around a bunch of werewolves.

Lydia tips her chin upwards and to the side as if considering a novel thought. “He's right, you know.”

Scott sighs, heavily, like the motion of his shoulders has to move the vault of the stars. “We should do it. We should prepare the best that we can and go in as a pack against one of the Halehound points. If we coordinate, we should be able to push through. Then, I guess, we'll get to whoever's behind this.”

“You mean, other than Stiles?”

“ _Jackson_ .”

Stiles straightens, slapping his palms down on the top of the table as he goes. The noise is loud in the small room, and draws all eyes to him. “ _Yeah_ , he means other than me. I know you're pissed. I know Scott especially feels betrayed. But Lydia and I were betrayed, too. I'm  _sure_ of it. I'm—look. I'm certain we wouldn't have done this to you guys on purpose. Something went very wrong. And I'm willing to risk a whole lot to get everyone out of here and figure out what it was.”

Silence stretches around like uneven dough before Scott's voice lights under it with a fire of authority. “We take one day behind the ash to get the pack ready. The day after tomorrow, at dawn, we're getting  _out_ .”


	19. Chapter 19

The meeting breaks up and Stiles immediately gets dumped on the Builders and the Bricknicks, overseeing their conversion of a lot of the things in the Glade to useful materials for their upcoming assault on the Halehound Hole. He tunnels in, hyper-focusing on the idea of making a layered shield of wood with just the right ratio of structure and empty spaces to be able to stop a Shade's arrow without being too heavy or cumbersome to carry at speed. They go through several prototypes and Stiles finds inside of himself a willingness to demand a sort of perfection he didn't even know he could recognize, much less care about.

After that, it's trying to turn hardened leather into the kind of armor that will be even remotely useful to the humans in the group. Stiles works all the way through the dinner hour and is still frustrating over the problem of finding  _anything_ in the Glade that stands up to a werewolf's casual claws, when Scott just sort of  _manifests_ behind him, one hand on the middle of his back. “Come on. You need to get some rest.”

Stiles sits straight almost abruptly, scrubbing at the inner edge of one eye with the knuckle of his index finger. “Yeah, I just need to--”

“Sleep.” Scott asserts, the pressure on his back increasing just slightly. “You need to sleep. You have tomorrow to work on this.”

“And if I don't get it done tomorrow it's too late.” He can feel his focus slipping, spreading out over his hands and then falling between the gaps like grains of sand. Stiles scrunches his face up in brief frustration.

Scott makes a sympathetic noise, and slides his hand along Stiles' back until he finds the curve of one side of his ribcage and tries to pull Stiles standing with gentle pressure. “Yeah. And you'll work better rested, so if you've got any chance of making it happen tomorrow, you need to come to bed now.”

Stiles' hands freeze over the leather, and he blinks blankly at the space in front of him before he turns to look over his shoulder at Scott's face, studying every tiny detail of it in the dying light. “ _Come_ to bed?”

The alpha simply shrugs, removing his hand from Stiles' back as if he's afraid that he's not meant to be touching.

Something flutters in the bottom of Stiles' throat, but he smiles, and pushes himself to his feet. “Okay.”

Scott smiles, and the fluttering in Stiles' throat only gets worse, like the feathers of a hummingbird trapped under his skin. His palms burst into a cold sweat and Stiles scrubs them down the length of his thighs several times. It doesn't really do anything to dry them off but it sure does a lot for making him look awkward and off-balance.

He starts to make his way towards the hammocks, but Scott makes a quiet sound of negation in his throat, his hand moving back to Stiles' back to steer him towards the Den. “Not tonight. We're going to spend the night upstairs.”

Stiles coughs, startled, trying to make out the details of Scott's face as they move into the Den. Everything is dim, lighting at a minimum, and Stiles finds it difficult to really see the fine points of the things around him. In the case of Scott's face, it's a true pity. The fine points of Scott's face should never go unremarked. “Isn't the upstairs supposed to be kept for people who are hurt or sick?”

Scott makes a sound that's almost a laugh, and he stops, turning to face Stiles fully. His features might be blurred by the dim light, but his eyes are bright, vaguely backlit with a crimson tinge. “Stiles—I don't know what's going to happen the day after tomorrow. I don't know if both or even either of us are going to survive, and I don't know what the world is like beyond that. What I do know is I have parts of all these really  _nice_ memories from before the Glade, little bits and pieces of remembering you and me. And I'd like to have a memory of that which isn't broken or too faded to make much sense of. If you're willing. If it's not, it's okay, you can use the bed anyway, you've worked hard today.”

The ambiance of the Glade, even the chirping of those infuriating, nonsensical crickets, washes out under the roaring of Stiles' blood in his ears. He swallows heavily, feeling himself blink out of sync with his thoughts. He must look like such a complete idiot. “Scott...I'm not sure I'm still the guy in your memories. There is still so much I don't remember.”

Shaking his head with a fond faintness, Scott presses his fingers against Stiles' spine, guiding him towards the stairs. “Don't worry, I can see the same guy from my memories every time I look at you. Besides, I can also smell that you want to.”

There is a defiant-hearted voice in Stiles that wants to protest that his scent doesn't give Scott any right to make any presumptions, which it doesn't, but he's already headed up the stairs, voice a grateful breath. “Yeah. _Yeah_ . I do want to. A lot. Your pack isn't gonna freak out?”

A low chuckle. “No. They let their Alpha choose his mate as he pleases.”

Stiles pauses just as he gets his hand on the door of the room with the bed, looking back at Scott like he can't quite work out what's just been said or  _why_ it's been said. He drifts into the room like paper on the breeze, studying Scott as he follows in and closes the door, rasping his voice around words. “...did...did you just say 'mate'?”

This time, Scott looks taken aback, hovering near the door to keep from crowding in too close to Stiles' personal bubble. He looks so wounded that it almost has a flavor on the back of Stiles' tongue, bitter and heavy. “You mean you don't feel it?”

He almost asks what Scott means. He almost asks. His mouth opens to form around the words, and then, as easy and obvious as a door opening, Stiles understands. He felt it the moment that he heard Scott's voice, that high-voltage idea that he  _knew_ Scott, a familiarity that crawled along the surface of his skin without any explanation. It had never really left since then, although Stiles had found the feeling was far more intense when Scott was actually close to him. It had become the ambient white noise of existing, comforting in its own way, underpinning every thought and breath with some kind of sense of  _Scottness._ Since he'd woken up, however, even with only fragments of his memories fitted into place, it had become something more. It's almost like a presence, now, something warm and breathing in the back of his mind, alien and native at the same time. Closing his mouth, Stiles takes a deep drought of air into his lungs and  _presses_ , somehow, skating mental fingers over the surface of the space now claimed there in curious wonder.

Scott's response is immediate, as confident as if Stiles had touched his physical body. “Yeah. That. That right there. That's me.”

“H...how? What's...”

“I don't know.” The admission seems too heavy for the room, coiling in the pit of Stiles' stomach as soon as it's out of Scott's mouth. “I have no idea. But it started when I saw you in the Den, and it got a lot stronger once I had some of my memories back, and now that you have some of yours too it's almost like it's tangible. We've got a connection that goes way,  _way_ beyond anything anyone else here has. I don't want to overthink it. I kind of...I kind of  _like_ it. It's like having you near to me even when you can't be. I just kind of want to...”

Stiles doesn't even know how much of the yearning is his own and how much he's suddenly aware that he's sensing from Scott, but he doesn't care. He closes the distance, pressing himself boldly into the Alpha's space, trying to nuzzle right in against Scott's mouth. “...shut up. I get it.” He's  _just about_ to take a kiss from that mouth he's so near when memory intercedes, and Stiles leans back just a little bit, raising his eyebrows as if he's surprised with his own question as he locks Scott's gaze. “If I kiss you again, you aren't going to put your claws in my neck this time, are you?”

Scott rolls his eyes and somehow turns the motion into claiming Stiles' lips with his own at the tail end of it.

They end up on the bed, Stiles on his back, Scott above him and with a hand bracketed on either side of Stiles' head. He isn't quite sure how they got there, and he doesn't care. What he cares about is the warmth in Scott's eyes as he looks down, matching the blossoming warmth in the back of his head. He cups the side of Scott's face with one of his hands, smiling tenderly, dragging the print of his thumb over the arc of his cheekbone. “I can't actually believe I forgot you. I can't believe they tried to  _take_ you from me.”

The alpha leans in, pressing his mouth against the stretch of Stiles' neck, nudging along the skin with the point of his nose like he has to drink in the scent of Stiles to secure it in his lungs. “I won't let them. Whoever they are. I don't care, I'm not letting go of this again.”

Stiles laughs. They make love, nothing more crude or complicated than that. Scott has a container of aloe vera which turns out to make excellent lube considering the circumstances. The smell of it makes him think of summertime and beaches he can't account for having been to, better times just out of reach. Under the broad span of Scott's palms and the gentle assurance of his mouth, Stiles can forget the terrible things on the outside of the room, the doom of reality pressing in from all sides. He forgets everything he can't remember and knows only the warmth of the boy in the bed with him, the way they move together like they were designed with one another in mind.

It's sweet and tender and overwhelming, and the ache that fills his body from shoulder to knee as Stiles falls asleep, cradled against the furnace warmth of Scott's chest, settles into his bones in far more welcome a way than the burn of running too fast and too far the nights before.

Stiles drifts off with the feeling that he'd have spent a thousand days in the Glade if they all ended like this.

 


	20. Chapter 20

The next day goes by in a blur. Even with his memories being fragmented, shattered pieces of what they're supposed to be, Stiles is certain he's never worked so hard in his entire life. He spends half of the morning fitting Lydia with her makeshift armor and alternating between bickering about and apologizing for every time he has to put his fingers in an inappropriate place just to adjust the fit. It feels like a familiar dynamic, not as deeply visceral as his connection with Scott, but like something they had settled into in the past and might again in the future, with some time when their lives aren't on the line.

He adds it to the growing pile of his internal convictions, that they will find a place somewhere outside of the Maze where he can visit Lydia's house and bicker with her over inconsequential things.

By late morning Stiles has been fostered off on Brett, working with Liam to divide up their food stores and pack them up so that the maximum amount of food can be carried out of the Glade with them. They have no idea what lays beyond, after all, and no way of knowing if they'll need to sustain themselves with the resources from the Glade. Everything that might last is split up between the wax paper packages and the knapsacks that the Pack will be carrying. Everything perishable—of which there is a lot—is put into production for lunch and dinner. Not that lunch and dinner are really separate things; instead it's an endless parade of buffet-style food, constant availability for the Packmates wandering in and out of the Den throughout the day. It's a strangely subtle and yet overwhelming underpin to the idea that there will be no coming back from this.

Liam seems substantially less anxious about what's looming on their horizon, which Stiles finds bitterly ironic considering that Liam's been in the Glade for at least a month and Stiles hasn't actually  _witnessed_ a single day of normal function. They snipe at each other off-and-own while packing lunches, Stiles too concerned about too many details to be able to actually focus on any of them long enough to make a difference. Liam hits his tolerance before Stiles gets any satisfaction out of what they're doing and shoves him out of the Den with a low growl in his voice like he's been practicing with Isaac.

He spares enough time for a short walk around the Glade before Stiles finds himself swept up into the shed next to the Blood House to go over the maps of the Maze with Derek. The silence that they start in isn't companionable, exactly, but there's nothing strained about it either, unlike the sort of tension that tends to thicken the air when he's around Liam. He gets the impression that Derek could exist forever with the quiet and be happy with it.

Stiles is not such a soul. Curiosity presses in on all sides of his mind until he finds the words almost exploding out of him, without his real awareness of them until after they're said. “...so there's one thing I don't get about you, Derek.”

Derek's eyebrows say everything, half prompting Stiles to elaborate and half impressing upon him that Derek  _does not care_ what Stiles doesn't get about him.

“When you came into the Glade, you were just a slobbering murder machine. I was pretty sure you wanted to tear me into fresh pieces of Stiles sushi.” Stiles watches Derek's face scrutinously, squinting like it might help him read the emotions Derek doesn't seem to show in his expression. “Then all of the sudden you were...you know. _Not_ a slobbering murder machine. What happened?”

“It was Laura.” Derek says, simply, and for a little while Stiles thinks he's going to leave it at that. The pressure from the unanswered questions presses down on them both, however, and Derek finally deigns to continue, although his eyes haven't moved from the hand-drawn Maze maps on the table in front of them. “Being a Halehound is like being in a rowboat in the middle of the ocean during a storm. There isn't a lot of room for anything but the rage. You forget everything about being a human. You just get tossed around and run on instinct and nothing really matters except what's right in front of your face. But some of Laura's scent was still around her grave. It hit me and suddenly the memories of her, of my family, were stronger than the rage. I could remember I was a man before I was a beast. It anchored me enough to be able to shift back after I'd been stuck in the Halehound form for so long.”

The vague shock of hearing Derek string together so many words together in one go is totally eclipsed by the content of those words. “And now? Are you in control now or are you stuck in man form now?”

By way of example, Derek lifts one hand. His fingers flex subtly and suddenly his nails are replaced with the sharp, thick-based claws common to all the werewolves in the Glade.

“Okay, okay, so, your control is just fine.” Stiles leans backwards away from the claws Derek has flashed, frowning at them until they recede back into fingernails. He looks back to the Maze maps but his mind isn't on them, he's already memorized them as well as he's going to. Instead, it turns over a different problem, sanding off the edges until Stiles thinks he might have something of value. “Like an anchor in a storm. Is that—maybe that's it. Maybe it's that  _easy_ , maybe all you need is something to hold on to, like in your head, when being a werewolf starts to get to be too much. An  _anchor_ .”

Derek rumbles a sound that could be construed as assent. “Makes sense. If you don't have anything to focus on, you lose yourself.”

Scrabbling his long fingers across the table in order to gather up the papers, Stiles bobs his head, latching onto the idea and trying to flesh it out and give it enough substance to survive on its own. “So...maybe if we found whatever the anchor of the other Halehounds are, we could get them to turn back too. Like they have to be people underneath if you were, right?”

For a long time, Derek is silent. He watches Stiles sort the papers, interceding physically to put them back into a more sensible order, as if their order could really have any purpose after this little session. He's struck briefly with the ridiculous mental image of trying to struggle their way through the Maze with the maps held up to the light, desperate to find their way. Eventually Derek shakes his head, setting the now-collated stack of papers down on the table again. “I think you probably got lucky in the forest. They've lost themselves, Stiles, they don't remember anything but how to hunt. They don't remember anything. They'll kill you before you have any idea what might anchor them back to themselves. You should probably just focus on surviving them.”

“What if they're more of your family, Derek?” Stiles asks, his voice so quiet he isn't even sure that he'll be heard.

But of course he is heard, because werewolves have an unfair advantage in pretty much every avenue of life, and Derek shakes his head softly. “They aren't any more, Stiles. They're already dead. Just because I came back to life doesn't mean they're all going to do it.”

The sentence haunts him for the rest of the day, as he tries to put any number of tiny things together to prepare for the coming day.  _Just because I came back to life doesn't mean they're all going to do it_. 

By the time the sun starts to go down, Stiles is exhausted. He doesn't feel that they are at all prepared for what's coming with the dawn, but he simply doesn't have anything left in him to work on gadgets or strategy or preparations. His fingers are raw and rubbed red, every joint in his body feeling like it might pop out of joint at any second. Like before, Scott guides him upstairs with gentle hands and murmured assurances, but the anxiety that stretches taut between them precludes anything short of simply crawling into the bed, Scott's arm slung low over Stiles' waist and pressed against his stomach like he can hold Stiles' flickering nerves at bay.

The funny thing is that it almost works. Every place that his body brushes up against Scott's, Stiles feels more relaxed, more comforted.

It almost manages to counterbalance the iron-flavored dread that coats his mouth at the memory of Derek's matter-of-fact voice in the stillness of the map room, the way that voice overlays itself with the stop-motion memory of the Halehound in the Maze, screaming and tearing at its face with an arrow in its eye that  _Stiles_ put there.

_They're already dead_ .


	21. Chapter 21

The dawn is thin and sickly and it doesn't break so much as ooze over the horizon and creep in through the cracks in the ramshackle building that Stiles and Scott have spent the last two nights in. It edges in like the bitter flavor of anxiety and it threatens to overwhelm him, drowning Stiles in the thick, viscous waves of it until he feels Scott's palm stroke down over the back of his neck. It fills him with the desperate need to stay here, in relative safety and within the length of Scott's arms, where the Halehounds aren't and where the terror of the unknown can't reach them. Scott must sense the recalcitrance trying to settle into his bones because his fingertips press in, just faintly, his voice hushed in the poor light. “We have to do this, Stiles. We have to do it.”

Stiles sighs deeply, pushing himself off of the bed and onto his feet. Scott is right. They  _have_ to do it. Living in a cage, as test animals, is not really any life at all.

They gather by the North Door, behind the ash line that Lydia stretched over the threshold the night before. The armor that Stiles fashioned the day before for himself and Lydia is piecemeal at best and looks utterly ridiculous, but he has some hope that it might be at least a  _little_ effective against the dangers of the Maze. It's better than not making an effort at all. He stands awkwardly to the side of the gathering Pack while he puts the armor on piece by piece, watching the faces of the werewolves as they drag forward all the packs of food and portable supplies that Brett put together, as well as the two-layer turtle-shell shield meant to protect from the arrows. They seem nervous and scared, like Stiles feels. They aren't ready.

He supposes there isn't any being ready for something like this.

The Packmates make way for Scott naturally when he tries to move to the front of the group, assembling around him with all attention on his warm, concerned expression. Although not physically the biggest amongst them by any means—Stiles thinks he might be an inch or two taller than Scott himself—Scott takes up space easily, comfortably and without denying anyone else their own space. It makes it obvious why he's risen to the point of leading this group of werewolves. It makes Stiles' heart swell in his chest. Scott's voice rolls out in the Glade and sounds far more settled and confident than Stiles thinks any of them are feeling, Scott included. “Okay, guys. I don't have to tell you that this changes everything. You all already know what's on the line. Everyone has worked really hard to prepare for this and it isn't going to be easy. We have no idea what's out there. It could be worse than what we've got here. If anyone feels like this is too much of a risk, this is your chance to say it. Nobody will judge you. We'll leave you with your share of the provisions and close the ash behind us. Anybody who wants to stay behind in the Glade, step out of the group now and we'll figure it out.”

Silence stretches out, but no one volunteers to leave. Scott's smile is flavored with the grateful pride that Stiles can feel from him, stirring in the back of his mind.

The werewolves gather around the center point of Stiles and Lydia, Scott and Derek taking point at the front of their shield. It feels little ridiculous to be surrounded by the Pack with a section of what amounts to wooden decking held over them, but Stiles is beginning to accept that his life is just a series of ridiculous moments strung together with confusion and terror. Scott moves a little to the side, his eyes on Stiles' face, and wordlessly, he lifts his eyebrows, turning to the side to cast his gaze down at the line of ash trapping the Pack inside the Glade. Stiles takes a deep breath in and holds it briefly in his chest.

Then he steps forward, aware of Scott's fingertips skating the edge of his body, and crouches in front of the threshold. He reaches down with one hand and sweeps it across the ash. The line disintegrates.

Stiles stands and the Pack moves around him like water, filling in the space around him and flowing forward through the Door. There's no real change when they cross out of the Glade into the Maze, and Stiles isn't really sure why he thought there might be. He adjusts the straps on his pack of provisions and tries not to stare too much at Scott's ass as they start to move.

With the wood baffle over their heads and a pair of humans in the group, the Pack doesn't move through the Maze nearly as fast as they could have otherwise. Stiles is constantly aware of that, constantly running the higher processes of his mind trying to figure out how to speed this process up. It's something to chew on while they jog, just fast enough to feel like it's a strain on his body, following Derek's terse, tense-voiced instruction every time they come to a junction.

They travel for about an hour, or maybe just for what  _feels_ like an hour to Stiles, when Liam stiffens suddenly at Stiles' left side. He's too out of breath to ask what's wrong with Liam, but as it turns out he doesn't have to actually ask because the rest of the Pack has sensed whatever has upset Liam. Someone's voice rumbles out low against the ground. “The Shades are here.”

Fear worms through Stiles' arms and legs at the words. He glances up to the inside of their wooden barrier, noting every place where it barely holds itself together, and the fear broadens with the conviction that his idea to protect the Pack has probably done little other than slow them down. He recalls the heads on the arrows he collected earlier in the Maze and can see, in his mind's eye, the image of those arrowheads bursting through the wood like it's crepe paper.

They crouch lower, collectively, and inch forward, well aware that the Shades have the ground advantage and can see the Pack on the move quite plainly. The air is tense and thick, and it's just about the point at which Stiles thinks the anticipation alone is going to kill his rabbit-quick heart in his chest that the slap of a bowstring snaps that tension right in half.

Seconds later, an arrow slams into the top of the wooden shield with a sound like a gunshot. By some kind of miracle, the shield holds, and Stiles wants to cheer.

Despite being so much shorter than Stiles, Liam reaches over to grab him by the arms, using his superior strength to haul the hapless human up onto his back. Malia does the same for Lydia on the other side, somewhat more gracefully, and Liam and Malia both slide in closer to the center of the shield's protection. Without a word spoken, the Pack begins to  _run_ , at a speed Stiles would have never been able to keep up with on his own. He swallows his indignation and concentrates on trying to keep his limbs from dragging on the ground.

The sound of the arrows becomes a hailstorm against their shield. It almost drowns out the sound of Derek's voice, shouting out directions to the Pack. The wood shudders with every impact, and Stiles imagines after a few distorted minutes of the assault that it's started to look like a porcupine, more surface area occupied by arrow than it isn't. He knows the structure of the shield won't hold up for ever. He can only  _hope_ it will hold up long enough.

They take a turn awkwardly, too wide, and one side of the shield tips up perilously. It's only a few seconds of extra exposure, but it's more than enough. A bow sings and suddenly Erica's voice cries out in pain. The whole shield wobbles and loses its level as she goes down onto her knees, an arrow protruding from the soft meat of her right shoulder, just where her arm attaches to her chest.

In the molasses crawl of time that follows, Stiles observes many things happen at once. Boyd roars, starting to release his grip on his section of the shield, and Scott is forced to pivot on his heel, shouting his beta back into line. Erica starts to try and struggle back to her feet, right arm useless but left hand frantically struggling to access something in the front section of her backpack. Stiles has never seen a face so steely and determined before. Their entire right flank is exposed where Erica had been, a pair of figures in dark leathers scrambling into view at the top of the Maze walls, bows coming up and to the ready. Slowed by the injured packmate, they're suddenly a shooting gallery waiting for the archers to pick them off. Stiles' blood goes cold.

A third figure joins the first two, rising up from behind one. It's smaller than either of the Shades with their bows out, but that figure moves like lightning, metal flashing in its hands. It's familiar, somehow, and Stiles is transfixed as he watches her— _her_ , he's so  _sure_ this is the same Shade whom he saw in the Maze before—tear the back of one of her own allies to pieces with the ring daggers in her hands. She pivots in place to turn her attack on the second Shade before it can understand what's going on, and for a split second, her brown eyes meet Stiles'.

He understands.

And so he starts to try and scramble free of Liam, bellowing at the top of his lungs. “Go! GO! Get Erica and go! Leave the shield, just run!”

All eyes turn to him in stunned confusion—after all, the shield had been his idea—and so Stiles tries to gather up all the conviction and absolute certainty he feels that this is the right idea into a tight ball. He flings it towards the back of his mind, where Scott still keeps residence, and he can see it when Scott starts to feel it. The alpha nods and repeats the orders.

Boyd snaps the arrow shaft down near Erica's skin, murmuring something to her as he picks her up. She laughs around a mouthful of the nasty-looking poultice she freed from her pack, sparing enough energy to smear some of the same poultice over her wound before she goes limp in Boyd's arms.

The Shade with the ring daggers takes a running leap and flies over the heads of the Pack, assaulting her fellows on the left-hand side before they can shoot another werewolf.

The Pack runs.

They leave the Shades behind. At the second or third hour of being jostled around on the back of a running werewolf, Lydia turns to meet Stiles' gaze with hatred in her eyes. He thinks he understands why, on some level; his own breastbone feels like it might collapse inwards at any moment from the constant battery of Liam's shoulder, but he still counts it as better than being dead.

By the time the sun is near the mid-day mark, they stop for lunch. The world has gone silent and Stiles finds himself wishing that he could still hear the nonsensical cicadas. No one eats much, and Boyd eats nothing at all, instead sitting with Erica's unconscious head cradled in his lap. Stiles' stomach and heart fight over which one is going to sit in the top of his throat, and he has to turn his head to the side, unable to watch any longer. Liam leans to the side to mutter roughly, “She had the antidote on her. As long as we get out of here, she'll be fine.”

_As long as we get out of here_ .

After lunch, no one has the will to run. There's no sign of further Shades, so the Pack moves with caution instead, conserving their energy for when it's needed. It gives Stiles the chance to walk on his own again, which his legs do not particularly appreciate but his ribcage is incredibly grateful for. The closer they get to the Halehound's entry point, the more quietly Derek speaks, his body language growing tense. A sound fills the space that Derek's voice leaves behind, and Stiles is probably the last person in the entire pack to realize that the sound is mostly growling.

Growling, and the scrape of claws along stone.

When they round the last corner, it becomes obvious what they already suspected; there was no hope of sneaking in while the Halehounds were asleep. There is a whole pack of them ahead, smaller than the Glader Pack but still more than large enough to be problematic. They move like animals in a cage, which is appropriate as that's more or less exactly what they are, trapped behind an ash line which is currently the only thing keeping their long claws and long fangs from digging into the soft flesh of the werewolves of the Glade.

An ash line that the Gladers have to cross if they have any hope of getting free. An ash line that either Lydia or Stiles will have to break.

Stiles swallows heavily as he stares down the Maze corridor, trying to count the Halehound bodies as they press and jostle against each other. They make an optical illusion out of their wirey hair and oil-colored skin, and Stiles can't figure out if there's five or fifteen of them. Their eyes glint with malice and no real lucidity, and Stiles can see out of the corner of his eyes the way simply being near them makes Derek start to pace himself, whining low in his throat. Scott reaches up to put his hand on Derek's shoulder and it seems to settle the man, letting him drop his weight back down onto his heels. He looks terrified.

“When we break that ash, they're going to come at us.” Scott is saying, calm and implacable as always, even in the face of the barking and snarling of the Halehounds. One of the beasts throws itself at the ash barrier and rebounds with a sizzling pop. “We need to be ready for them. We need to protect Stiles and Lydia at all costs. I don't want anyone to engage them any more than necessary. We need to punch through them to the other side and go through their door. We're not here to put them in the ground, we're just here to escape. Does anyone have any questions?”

No one speaks. Stiles wishes he'd thought to have stolen some of the Shade arrows, but it's too late now. It's too late for anything but doing.

Lydia glances nervously at him. Her jaw is set and Stiles knows, if he asked her, she'd go face the monsters to break through the ash line. Stiles won't ask that of her. He can barely ask it of himself. He gives his head a little shake and then steps forward, sidling up towards the line without comment. One of the Halehounds roars at him and Stiles swears he can smell its fetid breath. He tries not to faint.

The Pack gathers around him, crowding in on all sides until he almost can't even reach the line of the ash. Everyone else seems caught up in posturing, except for Boyd, in the center of the circle with Lydia and with Erica still in his arms. Losing Boyd as a combatant seems like such a blow to the Pack, but no one mentions it. No one says anything at all. Scott glances at him out of the corner of crimson flame for eyes and Stiles feels it in his mind as surely as he's said any words at all.  _Do it_ .

Scrunching his eyes closed, Stiles reaches forward and punches a hole through the ash line with his fingers.

Chaos.

The Pack and the Halehounds leap simultaneously, clashing like Titans, and Stiles is caught in the whirlpool of it all. He scrambles backwards as a clawed hand comes crashing in where his arm had been, struggling to get turned over and back onto his feet. The scent of blood splatters the air immediately, the sounds of Halehound roars and Gladerpack snarls and tactics layering over and over each other in Stiles' ears until he can barely make any sense out of them at all. He's frozen in place, knees and legs locked down against the stone, unable to see anyway past the carnage no matter where he looks. At the worst possible moment, Stiles feels his breathing become irregular, like no matter how much air he swallows in with his mouth and nose, it isn't enough for his greedy lungs. He feels lightheaded. He feels like he's going to die.

Something slams into him from behind, and then there are hands on his arms, one on either side. They aren't carving new paths into his skin, so Stiles figures they're probably Gladers, driving him forward. A hand on his head forces him to duck under the wide swipe of one of the Halehounds, and Stiles jolts back to himself, glancing to one side and then to the other. Derek.  _Jackson_ . Forward momentum. He isn't even sure which one of them is yelling at him. “Get to the door, you fucking idiot!”

They break off from the melee. The werewolves are more carrying Stiles than he's running, making a haphazard spring from the line of ash for the door beyond it. They're still running full bore when they actually make it to the door, and Stiles smashes his face into the stone before he rebounds enough to put his palms against it and look it over.

If he didn't  _know_ it was a door, Stiles wouldn't have been able to guess it in a thousand years of study. It looks so much like just another wall of the Maze, except for the design etched into its surface. The circle takes up as much room as it possibly can on the enormous wall section, a triskelion inscribed inside of it that's so large, itself, that Stiles' mind takes a few precious seconds taking in enough pieces of the picture to realize what it is. In the very center of the triskelion there is another circle, a complicated series of divets carved into the stone with some kind of knotwork integrated into the design.

For all Stiles can tell, it's a dead end. His heart plummets into his feet.

Desperation takes over. They can't have come this far for nothing. This can't be the end, some ridiculous fight with animals that were once people, trapped like rats in a literal Maze. He throws himself bodily at the stone, frustration boiling over. He slams his hands against the wall, he screams, demanding they be let out, demanding that the Pack be freed. It does nothing. All of his sound and fury signifies  _nothing_ .

He has no idea how long he's been battering himself against a solid stone wall when Derek lifts one hand, oddly delicate with his claws, and puts it on his shoulder. “...Stiles.”

Stiles turns, chest heaving with the efforts of his futility, only in time to see one of the Halehounds peel away from the Pack towards the three of them, there by the door. If an Alpha and two of his best fighters couldn't handle one Halehound, a human and a werewolf with post-traumatic stress disorder certainly weren't going to make good ringers. Something thunders in his ears that makes it hard to hear the sounds of the Pack fighting by the ash line.

The sound of Jackson's voice, however, as he swings his body into the way and blocks access to both Stiles and Derek, is perfect and clear and, somehow, still full of all the derision Jackson has always seemed to have for him. “I've got this. Figure it  _out_ .”

The Halehound charges and Jackson meets it with a fist full of claws.


	22. Chapter 22

Stiles can't watch the fighting. He screws his eyes closed and forces himself to turn his face away. He has to spend too many heartbeats getting his breathing back under control, the fingers of one hand reaching to grab at the nearest thing available, which so happens to be Derek's forearm. Derek allows him, allows the weak pressure of his human fingers digging into the flesh between his elbow and his wrist. It helps ground Stiles, helps him take control of his wild and terrified mind and wrench it back to the task at hand with almost a physical effort.

The more he stares at it, the more Stiles starts to come around to the idea that the thing in the center is actually the latch for the door. He can tell that the central circle has a groove cut all the way around it that seems like it could allow the circle to be moved. What he can't figure out is how to actually  _make_ it move. There appear to be no buttons hidden anywhere on its surface, and none of the dents or insets are big enough for Stiles to really get his fingers into, much less big enough for him to find some kind of switch or get a grip on them.

Someone behind him makes a barking noise of pain, more canine than it isn't. Stiles flinches.

He just needs something he could push into those grooves and use to turn the inset. Some kind of handle, or stick, something slender enough to fit but strong enough not to snap when pressure is applied to it. Stiles starts to mentally run through the contents of his backpack in desperation.

This time, the cry of pain he hears isn't canine at all.

Stiles is just about to the end of his mental sense of his inventory, mouth tasting of desperation, when the solution strikes him between the eyes like lightning. His grip on Derek's arm tightens faintly, and his attention turns down to it with a rubber band snap.

Specifically, to Derek's claws.

Eyes widened and swallowing hard, Stiles hauls Derek's hand upwards. The werewolf seems puzzled, but he submits to being moved around. It's better that way. Stiles could have never moved him otherwise, never spread his fingers out by nudging at his knuckles and then jammed the whole hand forward towards the groves in the inset.

Derek catches on and slots his claws into the grooves. They fit perfectly, spaced  _just right_ to fit. Derek closes his eyes and leans into his arm a little bit, pressing down with his claws until something in the inset clicks. It pulls out from the wall slightly and muscle memory takes over in the former Halehound. He twists the inset to the right, to the left, back and back again in some pattern that's clearly a combination, and then shoves the inset back into the wall like he's punching it.

The responding rumble of moving stone is immediate.

Relief hits Stiles so hard he worries, for a split second, that he's going to wet himself. He can't hold back the cry of victory that pulls its way out of his throat. Panting with the flush of their triumph, he turns around to the Pack.

He turns just in time to see the Halehounds flinch at the sound of the moving wall, disengage, and flee deeper into the Maze as fast as they can run.

He turns just in time to see devastation.

There is blood  _everywhere_ . Members of the Glader pack stand ragged and torn open, eyes closed and waiting for their bodies to knit themselves back together. Boyd is crouched in the middle of the Maze 'hallway', trying to catch his breath as he suspends himself over Erica and Lydia, his back a mass of red and exposed muscle. There are three bodies laying on the ground, unmoving and unseeing. Two of them are naked and identical, hands touching, the blank-eyed face that's turned towards Stiles one he's never seen before.

One of them is Jackson.

Stiles has never liked the guy. From the very moment that Stiles came up in the box, Jackson had been at his throat, convinced that Stiles would be the downfall of his pack. He'd actively tried to kill Stiles several times. He had not been Stiles' friend.

Seeing him lay motionless on the ground is still a blow that hits Stiles in the back of the head like a sledgehammer. He can't make sense of the smeared blood around Jackson's body, he has no idea whether Jackson won the fight or not. He supposes he must have, because he held that Halehound off long enough to allow Stiles a chance to figure out the puzzle and get the door open.

He sacrificed his life for his pack.

Stiles staggers to the side, away from the fallen werewolves, and retches violently, one hand on the wall to support himself as his shoulders and stomach heave. Slowly, the Pack starts to converge on the body of their fallen comrade, Scott taking point as he always does. He crouches by Jackson, reaching down to tip the body's face up towards his own. Something about what he sees makes another wave of disgust roil up, overflowing from Scott's mind into Stiles', and the human turns to press his forehead against the sun-baked stone of the Maze wall, gasping helplessly. “He's gone.” Scott says, and for the first time he doesn't sound at all like he has everything under control. He sounds like has nothing at all under control. “He's gone.”

Emotion wells up from somewhere, Stiles assumes from Scott. It washes through him, and then apparently out into the rest of the Pack. He turns his head to the side, watching as the shift takes Scott again, and still crouched with his hand on Jackson's shoulder, Scott tips his head back to let out a long, pain-filled howl.

Seconds later, and the Pack is howling with him.

The sound is haunting and mournful. When the door beyond them finishes opening, it's the only thing that Stiles can hear. It fills his skull and then it fills his entire body like he is a bottle filled with colored smoke. When the dirge fades off, Scott speaks with faint but renewed confidence. “Come on. The Halehounds are gone for now. We don't know for how long. Let's make his sacrifice count.”

Stiles pushes himself straight, backing up from the wall to step to the edge of the Pack's gathered collective. The werewolves move around him less like he's an obstacle and more, for the first time, like he's part of them. He ends up with his side pressed up against Scott's and Stiles is finished trying to keep up any appearances whatsoever. He reaches out and knits his fingers with Scott's, squeezing with his knuckles. Scott squeezes back, gently.

The wall that had housed the doorway for the Halehounds has retracted into the Maze, invisible as if it had never been there to begin with. Beyond where it once stood there is a dark corridor. The difference in the lighting between the dazzling midday sun of the Maze and the indoor hallway makes it almost impossible to make out any of the details with Stiles' pathetic human eyes. He wonders what the wolves around him can see and smell that Stiles is utterly blind to.

It doesn't really seem to matter. Scott's hand tightens in his and they step forward out of the light.

Once Stiles' eyes have adjusted to the poor light, he can tell that the hallway is nothing like the Maze. Where the Maze is made of ancient-seeming stone, etched with damage and wound with ivy, the hallway is modern and industrial. He imagines, ridiculously, that the inside of a dam must look like this, dark and lit poorly at intervals with naked, caged lightbulbs, the walls damp and humming with power and lined with pipes and cables. It's significantly cooler in the hallway, and Stiles' sweat-soaked body begins to shiver a few yards in. He doesn't know if it's actually the temperature or the fear-poisoned anticipation that's causing it, but Scott responds anyway, pressing his warm body closer and hooking their arms so that they press together, inner forearm to inner forearm, all the way from hand to elbow.

The only sounds in the hall are the dripping of distant water and the harsh breathing of the Pack as they move in from the Maze. They walk slowly, with the sort of low-to-the-ground caution that happens in wild animals that don't have any idea where they are or where they're meant to go. It's oddly peaceful for the amount of stress rising up off of the Pack for being in it, and the dichotomy makes Stiles feel a little dizzy.

The hallway takes a sharp turn to the left and opens up. The entire right-hand side of the new hallway is made up of large kennels, big enough that they look like they could probably hold horses, or maybe  _elephants_ . The doors are currently thrown open, and the whole area smells pungently of wet dog and stale meat. At the very end of the hallway, a standard door with chipped red paint waits. Above it, a red and white sign glows with a subtle light, so mundane and obvious, it feels unreal. It feels like a slap in the face.

It says 'Exit'.

From the middle of the pack, Isaac's voice rises up, so dry it might have actually sapped water out of the air. “Are you  _fucking_ kidding me?”

They stare at the sign for a long time, waiting for the trap to trigger.

It never does. Instead, Derek takes the initiative after some unspoken signal Stiles never noticed. He squares his broad shoulders and then reaches out to take the handle of the door, twisting it and pushing inwards. The door clicks and swings inward soundlessly.

On the other side is an enormous room, brightly lit and decorated largely in whites and creams. Most of two of the walls are dominated by monitors, showing a hundred or more angles of images from within the Maze. In neat rows on the floor of the room are computer stations, a dozen or so people in business dress and white lab coats leaning over their keyboards. The frenzied sound of typing en-masse stops as the door opens and the filthy, ragged blood-smeared Pack struggles in, dots of grime and darkness in an otherwise sterile-bright world. The only sound that's left to them as they file in and fan out against the wall with the door is a low, urgent whooping alarm.

The people at the computer stations stare motionlessly at the Pack. The Pack stares back. There's a Mexican standoff of confusion and barely restrained violence. It hangs over them all like a guillotine blade, just out of sight and deadly, until a voice breaks the silence with a tone that's altogether too reasonable given what's just happened. “Well, I guess congratulations are in order. For what it's worth, you beat the Maze.”

It takes Stiles a few seconds to find the speaker, standing near a battery of oversized monitors at a dias on the other side of the room. When he finally narrows his focus in on the man's face, he feels his breath freeze in his throat.

It's the cold-eyed man from his memory.


	23. Chapter 23

“I think we deserve some answers.” Scott's voice is hard, sharp-edged in a way that's otherwise been fairly un-Scott. He takes a few steps forward into the room, ignoring how the nearest labcoat cronies recoil from the outer edge of his presence. “I think after everything you people have done to us, the least we deserve are some answers.”

The cold-eyed man spreads both hands as if allowing Scott a touch in fencing. He begins to move forward, stepping down off of the dias, and Stiles is overwhelmed with a feeling of betrayal and disgust that he can't put shape too. He tries to serve up all of his unease and distrust of his man to Scott, but either Scott doesn't notice or he doesn't care to respond. He keeps his chin down and his eyes riveted on the ice-blue of the approaching man. It's not hard to imagine the raised tail or prickled hackles for all that Scott's form remains utterly human. The man tips his head to the side. “Of course. You're right. You probably do deserve some answers. I'm afraid you might not  _like_ the answers you  _get_ , but I'm willing to give them. Ask away, mighty  _Alpha_ .”

“Who are you?” Scott demands, straight to the point.

“My name is Peter.”

There's a low snort, unamused, that comes up from Scott's chest. “Okay. But I meant who are you, as a group? Who is H.A.L.E., why were you torturing us?”

Peter raises his eyebrows mildly, as if he's genuinely surprised by the things Scott chooses to ask. “H.A.L.E. It stands for Humanity and Lycanthropy Experiment. It is an independent research company backed by grants from what's left of the United States government. Our objective here isn't to  _torture_ you, Scott. It's to find a cure.”

Scott frowns, and Stiles feels like the entire pack frowns with him. “A cure for  _what_ ?”

“Lycanthropy. You might have noticed, you all have this little condition which causes you to grow fangs and claws and extra hair when you're agitated?” Peter glances to Stiles and then to Lydia, his expression dismissive. “Well. Most of you, anyway. You're all  _lycanthropes_ . Werewolves, in laymen's terms.”

It's Isaac that speaks this time, angry and a bit derisive. “Hey, I don't know if **you've** noticed, but we don't exactly need a  _cure_ . We do just fine as long as people aren't trying to shoot us full of poisoned arrows.”

Again, Peter spreads his hands as if he's conceding that an excellent point has been made. “Not everybody is so lucky, Isaac. The world isn't exactly doing well these days. You were probably better off in your little slice of Eden with all those big walls to protect you.”

Scott growls, very faintly, and Peter turns his gesture into something more conciliatory, as if anyone will believe he didn't precisely mean to cause the offense he just caused. “Let me explain. About twenty years ago, give or take, an epidemic broke out in the human population. No one really knows where it started, or how it started. What was obvious from the start was that the disease was highly contagious, transferred from person to person by bite, deep scratches, or inherited from either parent at birth. It caused extreme physiological and psychological changes to the infected, causing partial or complete transformations. You know what the disease is like. You all have it, barring Stiles and Lydia. The difference was, it also caused the infected to become highly aggressive. They lost all sense of humanity and instead devolved to indulging their baser instincts, frequently in a—shall we say—unnecessarily  _violent_ manner.”

“The Halehounds, you mean.” Stiles interjects, trying not to glance at Derek too obviously. If Peter already knows everyone's name, he knows about Derek too, but Stiles still feels strangely like it would be a bit of a betrayal to give that information up willingly.

“Yes, that's what you  _clever_ kids decided to call them. At first, the infected were manageable. Then, a decade ago, the outbreak exploded out of containment. People all across the globe were becoming infected and losing themselves to the animal inside. The human race, for the first time, faced a real threat.” Peter's ice-pick eyes slip over every face in the crowd in turn, carefully gauging reactions. “But about that time we also started to observe people who seemed to be immune. Not to the disease, obviously, but to the mind-destroying aspect of it. We started to see werewolves who kept control of their human faculties at most or all times. It made us think that there might be such thing as a treatment. Maybe even a cure. So we began the H.A.L.E. to observe what was different about those in control in hopes of giving that control to the entire world.”

It sounds strangely reasonable, if one ignores the terrible things that happened to the Pack while they were  _in_ the Maze. It sounds just reasonable enough that it makes anxiety gnaw at Stiles' belly, in towards his spine.

“How exactly did that lead to you putting a bunch of kids in a Maze they literally couldn't solve for three years, with things trying to kill them?” It's the hardness under that usual level of calm, in Scott's voice, that really sounds off. Stiles glances to him and realizes that Scott's eyes are brilliant crimson red, the only outward sign of his agitation.

Peter smiles. It's frankly unnerving. “Oh, but  _that_ was your friend  _Stiles'_ idea, didn't he tell you?”

Stiles sucks in a sharp breath, teeth biting into his bottom lip. He knows some of the Pack already knows this. He also knows that most of them  _don't_ . The tentative solidarity with the Glader werewolves that he'd felt start to form snaps, and they move away from him. Someone growls, and Stiles has to will himself not to ball his fists up and look like he's trying to be aggressive. Body language is everything.

Scott remains unmoved. “He told us after he went through the Changing that he had designed the Maze. He also told us that it wasn't being used for what it was meant for.” Somehow he manages not to sound as if he's started to use the  _royal we_ .

“Is  _that_ what he said?” Peter wonders, quietly, and he tucks his hands behind his back, folding them, starting to wander in a slow pace in front of the edgy Pack. “Now, that  _is_ strange. I mean,  _think_ about it. It's all designed so flawlessly to do exactly what it did. A safe haven in the middle with regular supply drops to help the stable werewolves survive. A Maze to stimulate brain activity and encourage unity, commonality. Guidelines, structure, Shades to keep you from self-cannibalizing, either figuratively or literally. Repeated, controlled exposure to unstable werewolves in the hopes that whatever made you special might be something they could  _learn_ . All the observational data we could possibly accumulate. What exactly about that was the Maze not being used for what it was  _meant_ for?”

Now, Scott's breathing has started to pick up, ever-so-faintly. His hands curl into fists. “People  _died_ in that Maze. To Halehounds! Who were also people. We  _killed_ people! What made you think that was okay? Even a  _little_ bit?”

Peter's self-assurance is implacable, like a mountain face. “There's an old quote I heard once. The goods of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the needs of the one. Where was it— _oh_ yes. I'm pretty sure it was _Stiles_ that taught me that quote. In the face of the survival of the entire human race, a few casualties are not only acceptable, they're expected. Before Stiles so smartly lost most of his memories, he agreed with me. Hence, the Maze.”

Stiles' heart drops into his heels. He tries to edge closer to Scott, mouth stammering quietly. “I didn't—I didn't...no. No, I wouldn't have...I wouldn't have been okay with this at all. Scott,  _please_ .”

“ _Stiles_ .” The word is a lead shotput against his breastbone. It's a warning. He can  _feel_ it writhing in the back of his head, unspoken.  _Don't come any closer_ .

Peter's face immediately casts over to derision. “You don't even know your  _name_ , Stiles, I don't think you're in any place to understand who you are or what you'd have been okay with. It's really quite simple. You designed the Maze that your new friends have been trapped in for years, and you designed it to be every bit as brutal as it is. I think by this poin--”

Whatever else Peter might have said is suddenly interrupted by the distinct noise of a weapon being cocked. Stiles doesn't know how he even recognizes it, but he does, and it's clear  _everyone_ does. The entire room goes tense, like a powderkeg in a lightning storm, and finally someone notices the source of the sound.

Perched in the catwalk rafters of the room is the lady Shade. She has her mask and her hood down and Stiles can see her face, indistinctly and from a distance. Long, wavy brown hair, dark eyes, a flash of memory where she handed him a key and an urgent imperative. She is holding a modern-looking crossbow in both hands, calm and collected. Her aim puts the arrowhead right between Peter's eyes, from the back of his head. “Peter Hale. Listen good. I have a whole quiver of wolfsbane arrows up here with me. This one is already drawn and ready to fire. All you have to do is flinch wrong and I'm putting this straight in your brain. You and I both know that there's no antidote fast enough to recover from that.”

“ _Argent_ . Of  _course_ .” Peter hisses, and slowly, he puts his hands up, turning to look up at the girl near the ceiling. “Of  _course_ . I should have known. What do you want, Allison?”

“I want them to know the  _truth_ , Peter.”

He doesn't stop glaring up at the end of the bolt in the crossbow, but Peter shakes his head minutely to the side, mouth tugging at a frown. “I don't have any idea what you mean. I  _have_ been telling the truth.”

“ _No!_ ” She shouts, clipping through the last of Peter's sentence. “No.  **No** . I'm not letting you do this. You know what? Shut up. Keep your mouth shut and maybe you'll live.  _I'll_ tell them the truth.”

Peter's allowing gesture doesn't look nearly so much like he's at a disadvantage as Stiles would like. It's the slap-worthy smile that really does it.


	24. Chapter 24

Allison is unfazed. She crouches in the rafters in a way that makes it seem like she could stay there forever, patient and motionless, her hands steady on the crossbow. “It wasn't like this in the beginning. When we all started, when Talia was in charge. It was good in the beginning. We were _doing_ good.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Stiles sees Derek stiffen at the name 'Talia', and he turns his face to consider him, trying to discern why. As always, there's little explanation to be found on Derek's face, and he simply doesn't have the extra space in his brain to figure it out. It's more important to listen to the words of the Shade near the ceiling. He has no real reason to trust her, other than his intuition, but that intuition is so  _overwhelming_ he can't ignore it. Nobody is ignoring it. Everyone is riveted on Allison.

“Talia knew that not everyone with lycanthropy could control their shifts. She honestly wanted to help people. That's why she founded H.A.L.E. That's why everyone here volunteered.” A tangible skepticism runs through the Pack, and Allison makes a quiet hmming sound of confirmation. “I'm serious. Every single one of you volunteered. Back when things were good. Before Peter took over.”

Peter makes a low, guttering noise that perfectly encapsulates a sheer, utter sort of disgust. “ _Please_ . Is it really necessary to be so dramatic?”

There's a quiet clatter of metal and plastic on each other as Allison readjusts her grip on her weapon. “I wouldn't dream of taking that from you, Peter. No. It's necessary for me to be  _honest_ .”

Stiles can still feel the skepticism and tension from the Pack, or maybe just from  _Scott_ , but they remain silent. Allison lets her eyes sweep over the gathered again before she continues, her tone low and heavy like lead. “Peter was jealous, I guess, of the power his sister had, of the respect she commanded. I don't know, really. What I do know is that one day, Talia was just  _gone_ . Things started changing after that. People stopped getting choices and started getting orders. Then people just started to disappear.”

“As terrible as that  _sounds_ ,” Isaac says again, as unimpressed as before, “But what exactly did you volunteer for, back when things were 'good'? With your extreme talent at tracking us through the Maze and shooting us with arrows that kill us?”

Liam speaks up just after Isaac, seeming just as unhappy. Stiles feels as if he's losing their faith, or maybe he never had it at all, and he can't help but try and separate himself a little from the Pack. He doesn't belong. “And why a Maze? Why take our memories?”

“I don't have all of the answers, because I don't know why Peter did everything he did. Talia first hired my family as security, to keep the H.A.L.E. compound protected from the unstables outside. We used exclusively non-lethal methods and relocated the unstables further away from the compound. It was all very humane, we never wanted to kill them, the whole  _point_ was to find a cure.” Allison doesn't move her attention from Peter, although it is clear she's speaking to Isaac and Liam. “Gradually, we were told to take more and more drastic measures. If we started objecting to it, we started to disappear. After my Aunt and my Mother were taken, we learned not to rock the boat too openly.”

She does spare a dark-eyed glance towards Stiles, briefly, although her eyes snap back towards Peter the second he starts to shift his weight. She menaces with her crossbow and Peter slowly raises both hands again, shaking his head. “The Maze was meant for the unstables. We were looking for a way to keep them from infecting or killing any more people without killing them outright so that they could be cured when the time came. That's why Stiles and Lydia joined up, even though they aren't lycanthropes. They were trying to design something that could support the unstables and keep them mentally stimulated. It wasn't supposed to be deadly. There were supposed to be prey animals in the glade to be hunted.”

Scott's hands unclench from the tight fists they'd been making through the entire exchange, but he still seems like he is reserving judgment, or at least agreement. “If the Maze was designed to hold the unstable werewolves, then what did H.A.L.E. need the stable ones for? Why are we  _here_ ?”

“You consented to it. They were supposed to be a collaborative effort, a way to learn what made you stable and able to control your shifts. We never found it, and that just became an excuse after a while.”

Silence stretches out again, not lazy but still somehow complacent. Stiles can feel an objection building up in the back of his throat, and he finally can't take it any more. He spits the words out like hot stones, like they've scalded his tongue. “But we  _did_ find it. We figured it out, me and Derek did. It's so  _easy_ .”

Every eye turns to fasten on him, but Stiles refuses to allow himself to flinch. He holds his head up, chin tipped downwards to avoid showing his throat to anyone in the room. It's Peter whose voice sounds, low and derisive, without any of the obsequiousness of before. “Do you really think that you managed to do in three  _days_ what we haven't been able to do in three  _years_ of constant study? And people say  _I'm_ full of myself. That's really an entirely new level--”

“Maybe if I thought you'd actually done those studies, sure, I wouldn't think that!” Stiles snaps. He can't take it any more, or the way this guy sets all of his hackles on end. He's done trying to restrain himself for the sake of an edgy pack. If they want to eviscerate him for a sudden move, it might end up less painful than being in Peter's presence. “But you didn't. I remember enough to believe Allison is right. This isn't how it was supposed to be.  _You_ messed this all up!”

“ _You_ weren't even supposed to be in the Maze!  _You're_ the one who broke protocol, Stiles. This is all on your head.”

Stiles feels an unreasonable fear clench his heart, the vestigial idea that maybe Peter was right and that  _he'd_ done this. He takes a step backwards from Peter without meaning to be so intimidated, and without hesitation, Scott slides into the empty space, squaring his shoulders. “Don't put this on him. He isn't above making mistakes, maybe big ones, maybe really bad ones, but I know Stiles. What happened to us in the Glade wasn't his fault, and everything he's done since he got there has been to help us. I won't force my Pack into anything, but if you've been watching us for three years  _and_ knew us beforehand, you should have already known that I'd have helped if you'd only asked. You didn't need to force us to do anything.”

Peter rolls his head back on his shoulders, looking up at the ceiling in exasperation before lolling his attention around to focus it on Scott. “Oh, yes.  _You_ . Honestly, three years without your  _bland moral integrity_ at every turn has been a complete  _relief_ . But maybe you're right. Maybe it isn't his fault. Maybe it's  _yours_ , for taking something that never belonged to you in the first place. Maybe you could have prevented all of this pain and suffering if you'd just tried a little harder.”

Scott's hands start to ball up into fists again, but he doesn't have any time to respond. Instead, Peter's head snaps downwards a little, as if responding to some unseen external force, and he offers a sudden grin that has nothing in it that a smile should  _have_ . “But don't worry, Scott. I'll fix everything. I'll just take it back.”

He moves like he's been electrified. Peter's face contorts, literally transforms to display long fangs and the blue eyes of a Halehound. He lunges forward, clawed hands coming up to reach for Scott as the Alpha stumbles backwards and trips over Stiles. Allison's crossbow barks, but Peter catches the bolt in the air, the weapon no match for a werewolf's speed.

Stiles is thrown backwards. He hits the ground shoulders-first and pain explodes along his spine, his vision a dark blur for too many precious seconds. Scott staggers back another step and someone makes a frantic sound of pain. Bile roils up along Stiles' throat and digs its nervous fingers into his heart, and then his vision clears.

Somehow, Derek has imposed himself between Peter and Scott. He stands shivering in front of Peter and Peter's shocked expression for the five seconds where everything hangs in amber. The Pack explodes into motion when the amber shatters, piling onto Peter and dragging him backwards. Stiles is certain he is only spared because Scott manages to wheeze out the words, “Don't kill him!” Instead, he's held down by half a dozen sets of angry claws, digging into his shoulders and arms and ankles and drawing up blood that stains bright against the white of Peter's ridiculous lab coat.

Derek makes a choked noise and starts to collapse downwards to his knees. Scott barely catches him in time and gets him turned over to lay out on his back.

Somehow, in the span of five seconds, Derek's entire front has become a bloody mess. He has deep gouges torn out of his guts, the blood that wells up far too dark and sticky-black like tar. It runs in heavy runnels down his side and starts to pool beneath the small of his back and his hips, syrup-thick and smelling of sickness. A dusting of fletching is all that can be seen of Allison's crossbow bolt, the rest of it buried deep within the left side of Derek's chest. Its poison must work as quickly as Allison promised, because the dark, writhing lines of wolfsbane poisoning are already crawling up the sides of Derek's neck, staining the tears and the spittle on his face black as they fall free.

Perhaps the strangest thing of all, however, is that Derek is  _smiling_ .

Stiles can feel Scott's despair as his own. It presses down on him until he can't move, forced to stay half-crouched on the floor. The pain is also clear in the way Scott's voice warbles within its range, the way his hands clutch tighter at Derek's shoulders. “Why...Derek, why would you do that?”

Nobody moves to administer the antidote to him. The entire Pack seems to know on instinct that it's already too late.

And yet, Derek's smile doesn't fade. “Because. You're...you're gonna be good at this. You've...you've  _been_ good at this.”

“At what?” Scott can't seem to figure out what the former Halehound could possibly mean.

“Being Alpha. You're a good Alpha, Scott. I would have followed you anywhere. Take care of your Pack.”

Scott works his mouth a little, like he might be about to speak, but no sound at all comes out. Derek shakes his head minutely, trying to speak through the thick gurgle of tar in his throat. “Don't...don't worry about it. Was the right call. Don't blame yourself. Now I can see my family again.”

There is the wracking sound of a sob without origin.

The light in Derek Hale's eyes flickers, goes out, and he goes still.

 


	25. Chapter 25

_Everyone_ is still. Scott holds Derek's limp body for what it seems like a long time without moving, not quite staring at Derek's slackened, death-peaceful features. He is apparently trying to bore a hole into the ground just above Derek's left shoulder, struggling to swallow back the depth of his own emotions.

When he does move, the first thing he does is gently close Derek's eyes.

He lowers the body to the ground carefully, draws a deep breath in which he lets out through his nose. Then Scott stands, and slowly his eyes drag back to Peter, held down by the Glader Pack. His eyes are still red, but his voice is calm to the point of detachment. It actually scares Stiles to no end. “No one else dies.”

He moves with a predator's coordination, rolling his steps as he paces out around his pack to crouch by Peter's head. Peter sneers, but Scott just smiles, shaking his head. “Not even you.  **No one** else dies.”

“You do realize, if you don't kill me, I win.” Peter's voice is edged in poison, his tongue forked as a snake's.

And yet, Scott refuses that too, with the same detached smile as before. He reaches down to cradle the back of Peter's head with a strangely out of place tenderness. “No, you really don't.”

Peter screams as Scott takes his memories.

He passes out when Scott slips his claws free of the back of Peter's neck, and the Pack allow him to slump carelessly back onto the floor. Their attention moves so rapidly off of Peter he might as well have dissolved into the floor. Instead, they turn towards Scott. They don't seem to care about the blood on their hands or the blood on him, instead leaning in to brush their bodies against their alpha, touching his shoulders and hands and face and hair to provide comfort. Stiles rolls onto his hands and knees, unclear of how welcome he is in the forming dogpile until he feels a pulse of sadness and humble wanting from Scott, timed with a hand held out in his direction.

Stiles ignores the blood, too. He takes Scott's hand and allows himself to be pulled close, immediately absorbed into the Pack's process of grieving.

Eventually, Scott nudges in towards Stiles and presses a kiss to the flat of his cheek, and then he stands, breath moving deep and sonorous in his chest. He pulls Stiles up to stand along side him, looking from Peter's unconscious form to Derek's body. “Stiles. You said that you and Derek figured out what makes werewolves stable.”

“We did.” Stiles says, and his voice breaks around the words. He has to clear his throat and start again, trying not to stare at Derek's face, the way he looks like he's somehow only sleeping. The way that smile persists, even through death. “I think it was mostly him. I asked him what made him shift back in the middle of the graveyard, and he told me that Laura had been his sister and the familiarity of her scent had brought him back to clarity. We thought maybe it was based on feeling grounded. Anchored? Like good memories or happy thoughts or a strong cause could break through the rage and let the human mind get back in control, like it did with Derek. I bet if you all had your memories or even really thought about it for a while, every one of you would realize there's something that you think of when you start to feel out of control to help bring yourself back.”

Scott looks down. “That's going to make this really hard.”

Stiles finds himself smiling despite himself, looking up to the profile of Scott's face. Even the troubled expression he boasts can't quite destroy the beauty of his features, or quell the warmth and the faith that move in his veins when he looks at him. “I know. But you can do it. We're with you.”

Scott straightens his shoulders, lifting a faint but encouraged smile towards Stiles as he does. Standing back to his full height, he releases Stiles' hand and picks his way through the room and all the stunned, huddling technicians to the dais that Peter had been standing on when they entered. He takes the stairs slowly, as if he isn't sure he really wants to actually  _do_ it, and stops to look at the monitors in silence. There are still Halehounds tearing through the Maze in confusion, passing from monitor to monitor largely unremarked.

“Things are going to change.” Scott says, turning to look at the room at large with a renewed face of conviction. “We're going to go back to the way things were before. We're not going to pit anyone against anyone any more. The Maze is going to go back to being a safe place for the unstables, and we're going to work individual by individual to help them. Those of you in the Pack, I can put you through the Changing but I can't promise you all of your memories or that you'll like the ones you get. Anyone who doesn't want to help or do this work, you're free to leave now. Just stand up and walk out and you'll have your freedom.”

He pauses, watching the gathering, waiting for a response. Two of the technicians near the door stand up and slink out, never turning their back to the members of the Pack, but otherwise, the room is still. Scott smiles, and Stiles' heart does a little thrill, pirouetting in his chest. It's a little disgusting, but he's aware of it so Stiles figures that evens it out. Scott's eyes, finally brown again, flick up towards Allison, who is still crouched in the rafters, one of her hands pressed over her mouth and her crossbow no longer loaded or aimed. “You said your family disappeared. Do you think they're...?”

Scott doesn't quite actually  _say_ the words, but Allison seems to follow. She steadies herself and drops her hand, meeting Scott's eyes. “I think he bit them. I think he turned them into Halehounds because they wouldn't obey him.”

“Okay. We'll help them too. Can you tell the rest of the Shades to start protecting the compound again, like before?”

In that moment, it seems that easy. Allison pushes at her eyes with the knuckles of one hand, chasing tears, and smiles as she nods back.

Sighing again, Scott turns to the nearest technician, trying to calm their nerves with a wan smile. “Can you find a place to put Peter where he'll be safe  _and_ people will be safe from  _him_ ? We also need a place to bury our friend, and I need to talk to whoever is technically in charge with Peter no longer fit for work.”

The technician looks  _terrified_ , but she also tries to smile, tripping over herself to get out from in front of her station while nodding. She vanishes into the same door that the deserters and the room grows silent. H.A.L.E. workers go back to their typing and the sound quickly becomes white noise like the ocean.

Stiles is suddenly caught up in the notion of the ocean, and freedom, and the idea that if they wanted to, he and Scott could cut ties and leave, go find an ocean to look at together. He knows Scott won't abandon what he's started, but it's a nice conceit anyway. It's a fantasy he can indulge in, at least for a little while.

It's a fantasy made all the easier to embrace when Scott comes down from the dais to tuck his face into the line of Stiles' neck and embraces  _him_ .


	26. Epilogue

Seated in the hallway outside of the isolation cell, Stiles can't stop his hands from shaking. He's trying, he's been trying for half an hour. He tried closing his eyes, digging down within himself to find a source of calm, stealing the werewolf's method of anchoring, but it hasn't worked. He knows what his anchor should be, or would be, he knows where it would come from, but Stiles somehow manages to hold it in both metaphorical hands and tremble around it.

Luckily for him, that  _source of calm_ is actually sitting next to him, and can physically reach over to cap one palm over his tightly gripped hands. Stiles looks up into Scott's face, smiling a faint, grateful smile. “Thanks, Scotty.”

Scott smiles back, eyes flicking between Stiles and the door to the cell. “We can do this a different day, if you want.”

Conviction rises up in Stiles' chest, and he shakes his head softly back and forth. “No. It's time. I...I can do this. Or I need to be able to do this. I'm just scared I'm gonna mess it up. I don't wanna mess this up. It's important to me.”

Scott squeezes their joined hands, his smile growing more encouraging somehow. “You'll do great, Stiles. I know you'll do great. And I'll be right there the whole time. Okay?”

Stiles sucks a steadying breath into his lungs and nods. “Yeah. Let's do it. Let's just do it.”

They stand together, and Scott holds Stiles' hand as he lifts the other to punch in the security code on the keypad next to the door. It slides open on silent pneumatics, and they step into the isolation cell as a united front, although Scott releases his grip as soon as they're inside.

The cell is well-appointed; it's hard to remember it's a cell from the inside unless the door is locked. Much of the amenities of it aren't being used, because crouched in the corner is a Halehound with sandy-colored 'fur'. It— _he_ , it's a  _he—_ has been scrabbling at the walls for the past three hours, trying to use his claws to dig his way to freedom. It hasn't worked, it would never have worked given the mountain ash wood hidden beneath the plushness of the cell's inner lining, but the Halehound doesn't know that.

He turns to look at them as Scott and Stiles enter, a watery little growl rising in his throat. His eyes glow lamplight gold, his whole body grows tense and his hackles rise up over his shoulders and spine, but he doesn't charge them. Thank  _God_ , he doesn't charge them. Instead, he keeps his body low to the ground, creeping up closer with his belly protected. Everything about his body language screams wary curiosity.

Stiles tries to slow his racecar heart, instead holding a hand out towards the approaching werewolf. “H-hey. Hey. How are you doing? Are...are you okay? Okay, that's a dumb question. I just...”

The unstable werewolf skulks closer, glancing obviously towards Scott before he comes up to snuffle at Stiles' outstretched fingers. His ears prick up, body going still. Stiles lets out a brief puff of air, smiling hesitantly. “Yeah. Yeah, there's something there, isn't there? Do you remember me? 'Cause I remember you, now. Try to remember, okay? Try to think about it. I know you're in there, and you can hear me. Just try. Think...think back. I know it was a while. I'm probably bigger. It's just...”

Stiles's voice warbles, and he swallows, meeting the Halehound's eyes. He knows it's dangerous, he knows he shouldn't be challenging what might as well be a wild animal in such a way, but he can't help it. He pulls his lip into his mouth and bites down on it with the effort of trying not to cry. “I miss you. Okay? I miss you so bad. For a while I didn't, 'cause they took my memories too, but I remember now, I remember everything, and I just...I miss Saturday morning pancakes and hearing you come home from work super late and trying to learn math and drinking milk out of the carton and you calling me helpless and I just...I just need...”

The werewolf whines underneath his hand, starting to press his head against Stiles' palm. Stiles moves his hands instead to try and put them on either side of the strange-shaped skull. “...I need you, Dad. I miss you. I need you. Please...” He chokes inwards on his own voice and collapses into silence. The tears come as a matter of course, and Stiles couldn't have stopped them if he wanted to.

They are both trembling, unable to break the lock of their gaze. Stiles begins to worry that these are his last moments, and sooner rather than later the spell will be broken and then his throat will be torn out. Then, with agonizing slowness, the glow fades out of those yellow eyes and they melt into blue.

Stiles has never really known anything as deeply unnerving as holding onto the sides of a head in the process of changing shape, but he can't bring himself to let go. Halehound features flow and shift, fur retracting and claws diminishing and everything condensing until he doesn't seem to be a werewolf at all, but a man in his middle years, face careworn, hair the same sandy color of his former fur.

Stiles'  _father_ .

It doesn't matter that his father is naked. It doesn't matter that they're both crying. In this moment, nothing matters. His father's face contorts not in a shift but with emotion, and he reaches out to wrap his arms around Stiles in a crushing-tight hug, one hand cupping the back of Stiles' head and pulling it to fit in above his shoulder. It feels so familiar it stings new tears out of his eyes. It makes him feel like a child.

“Stiles...Stiles. I don't know how long I have. I'm dangerous. You're in danger...” His father is starting, anxiety in his voice, torn between desperately wanting to stay close to his son and wanting to  _protect_ his son.

Stiles shakes his head against his father's shoulder. “No, no, Dad, it's okay. It's okay. We figured it out. Whatever brought you back just now. If it was me, or maybe thinking about Mom, or just something happy? Just think about that any time it gets hard. Use it to anchor you. It'll be fine.”

“I don't know if it'll be enough, son. Since...this happened. A wolf needs structure, Stiles.”

Smiling shakily, Stiles leans back, trying to meet his father's eyes. “It's okay, Dad. Scott's an alpha. He's a good alpha. He's a  _really good_ alpha. We'll be okay.”

He glances back at Scott, hovering by the door, and feels his whole body might just dissolve under the torrent of emotions running through it. “Everything's gonna be okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you made it all the way through that beast, thank you so much. I really enjoyed writing this and I hope it had the impact I wanted it to have, or at least was a fun ride. If you catch any typos in it, please let me know, I didn't have a Beta reader and it's all just sort of raw.


End file.
